Mama June: Road To Redemption is an aspirational title. Actual redemption can be hard to achieve.
June Shannon has spoken to numerous outlets, sharing that she spent an estimated $900k on drugs in just one year.
Not even her own family knew that. Hearing that, they’re stunned.
And her adult daughter, the one who took care of Alana during June’s crisis, is also downright angry.
Lauryn “Pumpkin” Shannon spoke to TooFab about her mother’s destructive, shockingly expensive drug habit.
“When I hear that price and I hear it from the media outlets where she tells her story,” Lauryn remarked.
She expressed: “It is very hard to hear that.”
Lauryn explained that it’s hard to hear “because I didn’t know how bad things had really gotten.”
Of course. By that point, Lauryn had very wisely cut off contact with her mother after multiple disappointments.
She didn’t just do that for herself — she did that for her sister, Alana.
“After I moved Alana out, I really tried to work on ourselves as a family,” Lauryn recalled.
She emphasized that she “really tried to help mama.”
“And then,” she described, “we kind of stepped back for a little while.”
“So I didn’t see her,” Lauryn explained, “I didn’t put the kids around her.”
“When we meet this time on the show, it had been a year since we had physically seen her,” she detailed.
“So that’s hard to hear,” Lauryn said about her mother’s devastatingly expensive drug binge.
“I mean it really is, knowing that — not trying to sound mean and not trying to sound money hungry,” Lauryn shared.
“But to know that me and Josh were struggling trying to do everything we could to keep a roof over Alana’s and Ella’s head,” she expressed.
“It’s just like, but you were out here blowing a million dollars and you couldn’t help me?” Lauryn vocalized.
“I don’t think that she still fully understands the problems she left behind for me,” Lauryn noted.
She explained “because having to take care of Alana, I feel like she’s appreciative of it.”
“But I feel like the way that she says she’s appreciative of it,” Lauryn said, “I want it to be a little more sincere than that.”
“It’s very tough,” Lauryn admitted.
She explained “because somebody who was supposed to be there and supposed to be supportive.”
Lauryn remarked: “it just doesn’t seem that way.”
“I’ve done all these things,” Lauryn noted.
“And,” she added, “I’ve matured as a woman.”
“And now I gotta take the consequences,” Lauryn pointed out, “and I wasn’t even the addict.”
“It’s not like, okay I just take care of Alana,” Lauryn emphasized.
“Like, I have to go through my marriage problems,” she said, “that caused problems there.”
“It basically caused a whole uproar in everybody’s lives,” Lauryn characterized.
“And it’s just like, she sees it,” Lauryn acknowledged, “but she doesn’t see it.”
“She’s gotta prove a lot of things,” she added.
“She has to prove to me that she is truly sober,” Lauryn stressed.
“She has to prove to me that she’s not the person that even she was before the addiction,” Lauryn declared.
She described her pre-drug binge mother as “the one who lied about the little things.”
“For me too, she’s gonna have to let it take time,” Lauryn emphasized.
“For so long we were on her time,” Lauryn reflected.
“We were on Geno’s addiction clock and things like that,” she continued.
“Now, I want you guys to be on my time,” Lauryn stated. “I feel like it should be at my own pace.”
“We do need our space,” Lauryn announced. “We do need our time.”
She explained “because her addiction didn’t happen overnight.”
“Her falling into the drug habit didn’t happen overnight,” Lauryn remarked, “or her ruining the family, it didn’t happen overnight.”
“These things take time and that’s just kind of what I need her to see,” Lauryn emphasized.
“It’s very frustrating for me when she’s pushy, pushy, pushy,” she expressed.
“And it’s like,” Lauryn said, “we were pushy, pushy, pushy when we wanted you to go to the first couple of rehabs and you didn’t go.”
“Seeing Alana cry in general over the Mama situation is very hard,” Lauryn noted.
She explained that she feels this way “because I don’t want her to feel that pain.”
“I don’t want her to have to beg for her mom or dad’s attention,” Lauryn expressed.
“So, I think it’s good that Mama will be able to hear what we have to say and she has no choice,” Lauryn stated.
“She can’t run this time,” she noted.
Lauryn concluded: “She has to sit down and she has to listen.”