Jennie Garth shares her struggles with divorce, recovery, and building a strong co-parenting bond with Peter Facinelli to support their daughters and find peace after hardship.
Jennie Garth recognized for starring in Beverly Hills 90210, shared how she went through her darkest times when her marriage to actor Peter Facinelli fell apart and ended in 2012.
“I felt like my light was fading. I wasn’t putting out good energy. I could even see it when I looked in the mirror,” Jennie Garth 54, told People in an open interview on Wednesday April 8. “I saw the toll that grief and anger were taking on me. It touched every part of who I was. Dealing with the mental weight of a relationship falling apart became a daily battle for me.”
Jennie Garth and Facinelli were married from 2001 to 2013. Their marriage lasted more than ten years before ending. During that time, they had three daughters: Luca 28, Lola 23, and Fiona, 19. Later on, their daughters would grow up handling life as kids of divorced parents.
Jennie Garth at GalaxyCon Raleigh in 2025
Photo Credit: Super Festivals, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
“I went through a lot of years feeling hurt and broken overwhelmed by it, and it seeped into every part of my life,” she shared while opening up about the tough divorce and what came after. “The hurt wasn’t something I could keep inside—it spilled into my job, my friendships how I connected with my kids, and, above all how I saw myself because I just couldn’t move on. I know now I wasn’t the best version of myself back then, and I can see that . It aches to think about how my pain ended up affecting them.”
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Jennie Garth is out sharing her new book, I Choose Me, which will be available on Tuesday April 14. In this memoir, she writes about a tough night toward the end of her second marriage. That evening, she drank and took pills just trying to escape the pain and confusion, which landed her in the hospital to have her stomach pumped. After this scary experience, Garth went to the Canyon Ranch rehab center to begin her recovery and work through her struggles unsure of what lay ahead.
“There was this strange moment when I just thought, ‘I can’t keep holding onto this anymore. It’s ruining my relationships and how I see myself. I need to let it go. I need to forgive him,'” Jennie Garth told People. She said she figured out that clinging to all that anger and resentment was making her life harder, not his. The pain was hers to bear, and she had to change something to feel better. She was doing everything at home taking care of the kids, and putting so much effort into staying angry that she missed the lessons from the experience.
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Garth and Facinelli worked past their split and built a strong coparenting bond to keep their daughters happy and secure. As exes, they figured out a way to stay on the same page to focus on their kids. Jennie Garth found love again and married Dave Abrams back in 2015 after a tough divorce. Facinelli, on the other hand, is now engaged to Lily Anne Harrison.
“She’s the mother of my kids, and I care about both Dave and Jennie,” Facinelli told Us Weekly in an exclusive interview in February 2025. “Having a good friendship is important when you share children with someone. That bond is always there, so it’s better to make it a healthy one. We don’t treat each other like enemies anymore, and that’s real progress for sure.”
The Twilight star shared more about their path to recovery saying, “I wish we had reached that place earlier. When you’re raising kids with someone you’re no longer with, it gets frustrating. It’s tough when your ideas about parenting don’t match up. Figuring out how to work through that as a team is not always easy. We had some tough years where we couldn’t communicate well. We were both stuck in our own ways, each convinced we were right, and we let the kids down by not creating the shared parenting environment they deserved. Whenever we disagreed, it would blow up, and we had to learn to manage those moments better.”
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Facinelli shared that he and Jennie Garth are in “a wonderful place” following their divorce. He highlighted how their bond has grown stronger over time and explained how they worked through the challenges of divorce to improve as co-parenting partners.
“Good communication makes a big difference, and now I see her as both a dependable friend and a solid co-parent,” he said. “It’s a great feeling to have that. We can talk about our kids, our lives, and give each other the kind of support we never managed before. I’m not sure what might’ve changed in the past, but I know this feels better now. Kids are tough, and ours have proven that. But they notice when parents can get along, and it’s so different from when they don’t. These aren’t lessons from getting everything right—they come from trying our best.”
Facinelli joined Jennie Garth on her “I Choose Me” podcast twice in 2024. They talked about how they moved past their struggles to rebuild their connection into one based on friendship and respect. The conversation gave them a way to share their journey.
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“We had been holding onto a lot of unresolved feelings. Letting that go felt freeing and amazing,” he said to Us. “That episode brought healing to both of us. After it, we felt a sense of relief and were able to reconnect, which was such a good thing. We talked about stuff we had never discussed, worked through it, and started moving on. Opening up like that and focusing on how two people could come together to support their kids gave us what our daughters needed.”
Their changed relationship shows how important forgiveness talking , and prioritizing kids can be in coparenting. Jennie Garth and Facinelli proved that even after a tough divorce, building a positive and supportive bond for the family is possible. Garth, who grew up as a child of divorced parents, knew how it felt to be caught in the middle. She didn’t want her kids to face that same struggle. It’s a burden shaped by love but can leave lasting marks. She realized love still existed, although in a new way, and now they focus on what matters most—working together as divorced parents to give their kids a stable life in this new chapter.
Source:
Shelby Stivale (April 8, 2026). Jennie Garth Recalls Hitting Lowest Point After Peter Facinelli Split: I Was ‘Tormented by It’. US Weekly. https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/jennie-garth-recalls-low-point-after-peter-facinelli-split/.
Header Image: Jennie Garth at GalaxyCon Raleigh in 2025
Photo Credit: Super Festivals, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
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