Amber Portwood has a positive outlook on life nearly one year after she was arrested for an alleged domestic assault against her now-ex-boyfriend Andrew Glennon.
During a March 12 interview with Us Weekly magazine, the Teen Mom OG cast member and mother of two opened up about the way in which she learned to put her less-than-picture-perfect moments of the past behind her and move forward with a better feeling of love towards herself.
“I really had to go through something terrible in order for me to kind of sit back and say, ‘Hey, this is what I need to work on. This is how I work on it. And no more excuses. It’s time to actually do the job and get it done — one by one and not putting too much on myself,’” Portwood stated.
Portwood has chronicled her mental health challenges for years on Teen Mom OG but will not be using her circumstances as an excuse for the mistakes she’s made. Instead, she’s being proactive with her mental health and choosing to continue to work really hard to make sure that she is in a good place after learning to “truly, truly love” herself.
As Teen Mom OG fans well know, Portwood shares 22-month-old son James with ex-boyfriend Glennon and also has an older daughter, 11-year-old Leah, who she shares with her former fiancé, Gary Shirley.
Although Portwood was understandably devastated by the way in which her relationship with Glennon came to an end last summer after about two years of dating, she has since put her focus on her children and the other positive aspects of her life. She’s even gone on a hiatus from social media, as The Inquisitr previously reported, in an effort to keep her mind in a healthy place and not open herself up to potential hatred from online trolls.
According to Portwood, during her time of self-reflection after her arrest, she learned that she was not taking on relationships with men for the right reasons.
“I feel like I had this very immature outlook on filling that void in my heart. I needed to fill it with some sort of love and the main focus I had was men at the time,” she admitted.
Now, after learning to find love within herself, Portwood has realized that she doesn’t need to “fill a void” with a man when she has plenty of love and admiration coming from her friends and family members.