Round 2! An emotional Leah Remini revealed that her daughter transferred colleges — and noted that saying goodbye for the second time is even harder than the first.
The King of Queens alum, 52, took to Instagram on Monday, February 6, to share her daughter Sofia’s educational update with her 3.5 million followers. (Remini shares Sofia, 18, with husband Angelo Pagan.)
“Long story … but, one of the things I’ve learned in life is that there is always time to course correct. There’s no sense in sticking to something that doesn’t work for you. In any situation. At any point in your life,” the Emmy winner began the sentimental message. “In August, our daughter Sofia enrolled in a college she thought was meant for her. I moved her into a dorm room and came home heartbroken to a quiet house.”
Remini continued: “For many reasons, that school didn’t make sense for her, so she left, and we got to have her home for a few more months. A few weeks ago, she started courses at another University, and we moved her into an apartment.”
The Exes alum acknowledged that while “you’d think the second time would be easier,” she and her husband, 54, are “even more of a mess now.”
Remini concluded her post — which included clips from the family’s short-lived reality show — by explaining that while Sofia is “back at it now” and is “going through all the things a first-year college student should be going through,” she and Pagan are having a rough time. “Crying, not knowing what to do with ourselves now other than looking at pictures and videos and crying some more.”
The Second Act star previously revealed how hard it was when Sofia went off to college in September 2022, calling it “the most excruciatingly painful and proudest moment of my life.”
“I have never cried so much in my life. … It is the hardest thing I have ever done, and I’m still torturing myself with the idea that I might have pushed my daughter on the college track because I never got to go when I was her age,” Remini wondered at the time, sharing a throwback Instagram photo of her with Sofia as a child. “It is not easy to let go; change is so hard. It feels so unbelievably wrong to get on a plane without my daughter and leave her to be an adult when she is still just our baby in my and her dad’s eyes. I don’t look forward to going home where my daughter’s room will be empty without her until she comes home for Thanksgiving. My heart goes out to all the parents and caretakers who might be going through this bittersweet journey.”
Remini — who has been vocal about her break from the Church of Scientology since leaving the religion in 2013 — explained the following year that she left, in part, because of her daughter.
“[Sofia] was getting to the age where the acclimation into the Church would have to start,” the former Scientology and the Aftermath host told BuzzFeed in 2014, explaining that Sofia would have to go through a procedure known as “auditing” which starts with a series of invasive questions.
Recalling the difficulty of her own childhood within the confines of Scientology, the Kevin Can Wait alum told the outlet that she “grew up resenting my mother because she was never home” due to her work in the church. “I was saying ‘family first’ [to Sofia], but I wasn’t showing that,” Remini recalled of her own time as a parent in the church. “I didn’t like the message that sent my daughter.”
