Mykelti Brown, who is one of Kody Brown and his ex-wife Christine Brown’s children, recently got vulnerable as she spoke about growing up in a polygamous family. Obviously, we know some details about Mykelti’s family because of the show Sister Wives.
But during a recent appearance on the Cults to Consciousness podcast, Mykelti recalled some of the darker, less talked-about aspects of her childhood. This included being parentified from a young age. “The kids are raising the kids, essentially,” she said. “That’s a huge issue in polygamy.”
She described changing her siblings’ diapers when she was only four years old herself, and making breakfast for her dad when she was a child. By age six or seven, she was “walking around with a toddler on (her) hip.”
During one particularly harrowing moment during a recent podcast appearance, she revealed that she experienced something traumatic during her childhood, but got in trouble when she told her parents about it.
Her family had a strict rule against “tattle-telling.”
Which made Mykelti feel like she couldn’t tell her parents if something bad happened to her. “I think it created a lot of issues with us kids not telling our parents the truth, and not wanting to come to them when things actually needed to be told,” she said. “Like, ‘Hey, this neighbor kid touched me on my private parts.’ What kid is going to go tell their parents, worried that they’re going to get in more trouble?”
Mykelti revealed that this fear of getting in trouble in cases like this “traumatized” her. When the host of the podcast, Shelise Ann Sola, asked Mykelti if she experienced something traumatic like child sexual assault, Mykelti said, “There is an experience that happened to me.”
She’s not ready to talk about it in detail.
Mykelti did not elaborate on this experience, as she doesn’t feel she’s ready to open up about it. “I’m not quite emotionally healed enough and ready to talk about it, but there is an experience where I went, and I told my parents, and I got in trouble,” she revealed.
After that experience, she stopped telling her parents things. Now, as a parent herself, she wants the opposite for her kids. It’s so important to her that her children feel comfortable and safe telling her anything.
Mykelti didn’t start opening up more until Robyn Brown joined the family.
“Actually, the first person I really started to like talk to was my dad’s fourth wife, Robyn,” she said. “When she joined the family, I was about 13. She had a way of breaking down my walls and helping me when I was emotionally vulnerable to speak my truth.”
Robyn made her feel safer because she could tell her things without worrying about getting in trouble. She acknowledged that Robyn isn’t exactly popular among Sister Wives viewers, but explained why she had such a positive relationship with her.
“One of the reasons why I did like her so much and why I was so attached to her and why I got along with her so much is because I talked to her about things that happened to me and I didn’t get in trouble,” she said.
Mykelti recalled moments when Robyn stood up for her and went to her dad to say, “This is not OK. You guys handled this wrong. She needs help.”
This made Mykelti feel like, “OK, wow, there’s this person who came into my family that’s here to protect me. They like it when I tattle-tell. I’m allowed to talk to them about things.”
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