Jwoww Opens Up About Navigating Her Childhood amid Mother's Schizophrenia: 'I Still Feel Embarrassed' (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

Jenni ‘JWoww’ Farleyis opening up about her upbringing.

In anexclusive clipfrom the Oct. 31 episode ofJersey Shore: Family Vacation,JWoww sits down withBunnie XOto talk about her tumultuous childhood, which she was initially hesitant to discuss.

“I don’t like to talk about my childhood,” she admits. “It’s weird. I’m literally near 40 and I still feel embarrassed to speak about how I was raised. I haven’t even told my roommates.”

Jenni Farley at the People’s Choice Awards held at Barker Hangar on February 18, 2024 in Santa Monica, California.Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty

Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty

She says that her parents were only 20 years old when she was born, and when she was just 2, her mother “got very sick with a mental illness.” When Bunnie asks if JWoww is comfortable with saying more, JWoww decides to divulge the diagnosis. “Nobody knows but I will say it’s schizophrenia,” she responds.

“My mom was a schizophrenic too,” Bunnie chimes in before JWoww questions if she talks about it publicly.

“Yeah, I’ve been very vocal about it,” Bunnie says.

“I don’t really speak on it because she’s still here and I don’t want to define her as that,” JWoww then explains. “But at 22 that’s what she got diagnosed with.”

JWoww then recalls what triggered her mom’s illness to become worse years after being diagnosed.

“Around, I think it was my fourth or fifth birthday, my grandmother left my birthday party, a teenager hit the brakes and skidded across ice and T-boned my grandmother’s car,” she shares. “My grandmother died.”

“It was my mom’s mom and because my mom was suffering with mental illness so badly, she just couldn’t do it anymore,” she adds.

“Oh I just got chills,” Bunnie says as JWoww continues: “My dad at like 25, 26 was like, well you know, here we are.”

Jenni “JWOWW” Farley.Robin Marchant/Getty Images

Other cast members ofJersey Shoreare also opening up this season, withSammi “Sweetheart” Giancolarevealing her years-longIVF journeyfor the first time.

“Everybody puts their personal stuff out there, and I was just nervous about the whole thing, but I’m like, ‘Okay, now I guess it’s my turn to just say what I’m actually really going through,’” she told PEOPLE in September.

“I just wanted to keep it a secret for a really long time, even though I know I’m being filmed,” she added. “Because I was just scared to be out to them and, if it’s not what I thought, am I strong enough to be able to tell everybody that it didn’t work — like my family, my friends, my cast members?”

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source: people.com