Lindsay Hubbard is opening up about her transformative experience as a new mom, detailing how her 19-month-old daughter, Gemma, helped her face her own relationship with her mother.
“I look at [my daughter] and I’m like, ‘I could never walk away from her,’” Lindsay, 39, exclusively reveals in the latest Us Weekly cover story. “I thought I would be, like, the disciplinarian, the tough love mom, but I am such a sucker for this girl. I’m like, ‘Oh no, she has my number,’ and she’s a year-and-a-half old. I’m like, ‘God, she knows how to manipulate me already, and it works every time.’”
The Summer House star welcomed Gemma in December 2024 with a past partner. The now-exes split shortly after Gemma’s arrival and have since remained dedicated to amicably coparenting their daughter.
As Lindsay chronicled her life with Gemma on season 1 of In the City, she also opened up about her estrangement from her mom and expressed that the pair had no plans to reconcile. (Lindsay was raised primarily by her aunt Rhonda after her mom left when the Bravo star was a child.)
“I love that I had a daughter. I think it did heal certain wounds in my heart that weren’t fully closed up through therapy,” Lindsay told Us. “I think that it’s beautiful that I was able to mend some things within myself just by having my little baby girl, and it validated and made me feel justified in my decisions of not pursuing a relationship with my mom.”
According to Lindsay, her mom has not reached out to her in the wake of her reality TV success.
“I’m sure she pays attention, but I’m fine with it,” the reality TV star acknowledged. “I worked through all that. I started therapy, basically, after we filmed season 1 of Summer House. I was like, ‘They’re really getting deep,’ and I started realizing through filming that there was certain things that I probably needed to go to therapy and work through in a bigger way, and a lot of that was abandonment and … the way it shows up for women is different than the way it shows up for men.”
While Lindsay has accepted that she “probably will never fully get through” her mom’s abandonment, therapy has helped her move forward.”
“It’s now a matter of how I deal with it, recognize it, communicate it and react to it,” she said. “I think, given my history with my mom, I am able to understand things I don’t want to do and show up for my daughter in ways that I was missing.”
For more from Lindsay pick up the new issue of Us Weekly, on newsstands now.
