Hannah Brown Reveals Family Murder, ‘DWTS’ Turmoil, Eating Disorder and More in Book

Credit: MediaPunch/Shutterstock

Hannah Brown Reveals Family Murder, ‘DWTS’ Turmoil, Eating Disorder and More in Book

Hannah Brown’s book didn’t just cover her Bachelor Nation journey. In God Bless This Mess: Learning to Live and Love Through Life's Best (and Worst) Moments, the former Bachelorette gets real about her childhood, Dancing With the Stars journey and N-word scandal. “I think [writing about my childhood and The Bachelor] both came with their own challenges,” Brown, 27, exclusively told Us Weekly ahead of the book's Tuesday, November 23, release. “The tragedy with my aunt and my cousins was really hard because I hadn't really ever processed it. I had just gotten a therapist around the time of deciding to write this book. It was kind of, like, an assignment she gave me to write [about] it. That was really hard because there was obviously a lot of emotions there. But on the other side of that, it was really healing. And not only for me but for my family, which kind of comes up at the end of the book, like, how it really has healed our family from something that has just continued to be that hidden thorn in everybody’s side that we just cover up and pretend it's not there.” In the memoir, Brown revealed that her aunt LeeLee and two cousins, Robin, 6, and Trent, 4, were brutally murdered by a man who they allowed to live in a trailer in their backyard after he worked on their house. The man, who previously served time for a nonviolent offense, was out on a work-release program. Brown was 6 years old at the time of the tragedy. The former Miss Alabama also tackles struggles with her mental health, triggered by toxic ex-boyfriends and the pressure to succeed in her pageant days. [jwplayer 2LRBe3Nm-zhNYySv2] “I think the biggest takeaway is we live in a society where it's just, like, keep going, distract, distract, do the next thing, win this, do this — and there is no accolade, reward, amount of money, followers, whatever, that can really heal the pain unless you do the work,” Brown told Us. “It will just continue to build and build and build and become something that you never thought it would be if you don't really go to the source. And sometimes that means you're gonna fall on the ground and it's going to hurt real bad, but maybe that's the moment that you can start to heal. … It’s important in my book because, like, your mess can be your message in the end if you can allow it to. But you got to dig through the mess first. I think it's really being honest with yourself and what your s—t is the only way that you're going to heal and live life in a really impactful, meaningful way.” God Bless This Mess follows her Bachelor and Bachelorette journeys and post-show opportunities, including Dancing With the Stars. While she won season 28 in 2019, she revealed in the book how much she was struggling at the time. “I remember just being, like, ‘I just need a win in my life to feel better.’ And to realize that it didn't make me feel better, that moment was soul-crushing in the moment too,” she told Us. “I remember just being like, ‘Oh no, it's supposed to feel different than this.’ That was a big moment for me just in life. And one of the biggest learning lessons that I've ever had. I think I was supposed to win Dancing With the Stars to be able to have that story of — you can win the thing, but you have to realize it can mean nothing if you're just going for the trophies [and] if you haven't really worked on your heart first.” Scroll through for the biggest non-Bachelorette takeaways from God Bless This Mess — or head here for the Bachelor Nation tea:

Credit: MediaPunch/Shutterstock

Hannah Brown Reveals Family Murder, ‘DWTS’ Turmoil, Eating Disorder and More in Book

Hannah Brown’s book didn’t just cover her Bachelor Nation journey. In God Bless This Mess: Learning to Live and Love Through Life's Best (and Worst) Moments, the former Bachelorette gets real about her childhood, Dancing With the Stars journey and N-word scandal. “I think [writing about my childhood and The Bachelor] both came with their own challenges,” Brown, 27, exclusively told Us Weekly ahead of the book's Tuesday, November 23, release. “The tragedy with my aunt and my cousins was really hard because I hadn't really ever processed it. I had just gotten a therapist around the time of deciding to write this book. It was kind of, like, an assignment she gave me to write [about] it. That was really hard because there was obviously a lot of emotions there. But on the other side of that, it was really healing. And not only for me but for my family, which kind of comes up at the end of the book, like, how it really has healed our family from something that has just continued to be that hidden thorn in everybody’s side that we just cover up and pretend it's not there.” In the memoir, Brown revealed that her aunt LeeLee and two cousins, Robin, 6, and Trent, 4, were brutally murdered by a man who they allowed to live in a trailer in their backyard after he worked on their house. The man, who previously served time for a nonviolent offense, was out on a work-release program. Brown was 6 years old at the time of the tragedy. The former Miss Alabama also tackles struggles with her mental health, triggered by toxic ex-boyfriends and the pressure to succeed in her pageant days. [jwplayer 2LRBe3Nm-zhNYySv2] “I think the biggest takeaway is we live in a society where it's just, like, keep going, distract, distract, do the next thing, win this, do this — and there is no accolade, reward, amount of money, followers, whatever, that can really heal the pain unless you do the work,” Brown told Us. “It will just continue to build and build and build and become something that you never thought it would be if you don't really go to the source. And sometimes that means you're gonna fall on the ground and it's going to hurt real bad, but maybe that's the moment that you can start to heal. … It’s important in my book because, like, your mess can be your message in the end if you can allow it to. But you got to dig through the mess first. I think it's really being honest with yourself and what your s—t is the only way that you're going to heal and live life in a really impactful, meaningful way.” God Bless This Mess follows her Bachelor and Bachelorette journeys and post-show opportunities, including Dancing With the Stars. While she won season 28 in 2019, she revealed in the book how much she was struggling at the time. “I remember just being, like, ‘I just need a win in my life to feel better.’ And to realize that it didn't make me feel better, that moment was soul-crushing in the moment too,” she told Us. “I remember just being like, ‘Oh no, it's supposed to feel different than this.’ That was a big moment for me just in life. And one of the biggest learning lessons that I've ever had. I think I was supposed to win Dancing With the Stars to be able to have that story of — you can win the thing, but you have to realize it can mean nothing if you're just going for the trophies [and] if you haven't really worked on your heart first.” Scroll through for the biggest non-Bachelorette takeaways from God Bless This Mess — or head here for the Bachelor Nation tea:

Credit: Courtesy Susanne Brown/Instagram

Parents’ Toxic Marriage

Brown admitted in the book that she doesn’t want the type of relationship her parents, Robert and Susanne, have. “The ugly truth is that their marriage consisted of a lot of built-up resentment, a lot of fighting, a lot of harsh words and threats of leaving that they yelled at each other in the middle of the night, using language that I would never, ever want to hear in my own marriage,” she wrote. “It’s bad enough that I had to hear it as a little girl, hiding in my bedroom.”

The Alabama native opened up about her childhood, noting her family rarely ate together and kids would bully her because they thought her dad, a hairdresser, was gay. “There were times when I questioned whether my dad might actually be gay, just because he did something creative,” she wrote, noting that that was before she understood what being gay meant. She also claimed Robert had a bad temper and while Hannah made an effort not to be an issue for her parents, she wrote that her brother, Patrick, was a source of stress.

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The Murder

Brown’s uncle Stu came home to find his wife (Brown’s dad’s younger sister) and two kids, Robin, 6, and Trent, 4, dead in Alabama in 2001. According to Brown, the murderer’s girlfriend was an addict and he came to their house for money after previously staying there on a work-release program. After Brown’s aunt caught him going through her purse, he stabbed her. While she yelled for her kids to run, he caught Robin and stabbed her with a steak knife repeatedly. While her aunt managed to get upstairs to her son, the murderer found them.

“He had ‘gone too far now,’ he told her, and he stabbed her again. As she lay dying on the floor, he found Trent,” Brown wrote. “He slid open the door to the cabinets in the hallway. He pulled Trent out, four-year-old Trent, and he killed him, too. When it was all over, he went back and stabbed all three of them again, just to make sure they were dead.”

The murder created distance between Brown and her dad’s side of the family. She also wrote about how her family didn’t process the trauma as her parents didn’t believe in therapy. “I wasn’t scared of monsters under my bed; I was scared of someone being in my closet, sneaking into my window, breaking through our front door to kill my family. Not a monster. A man,” she wrote.

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Anorexia / Health Issues

Brown recalled being diagnosed with narcolepsy, something she believes could be “a direct symptom of the trauma of the murder itself.” She also had a tumor the size of an egg on her pancreas at the age of 11. She wrote that she got lucky and didn’t have to have chemo following successful surgery, noting that the health scare solidified her faith in Jesus and made her “the family’s spiritual leader.”

While competing in pageants, Brown wrote that she was often told she was “so pretty” but needed to lose 10 pounds. When she was 15, she went on an extreme diet and lost 16 pounds in two weeks — eating fruit until noon then chicken and green beans for both meals along with some almonds.

“It was never healthy. You can’t get into the pageant world without hearing about girls taking water pills. There were girls that all they would eat was hard-boiled eggs, all day,” she wrote about the “the body yo-yo” of the competitions.

Looking back at her time competing for Miss Alabama USA, she wrote that she now knows she was battling anorexia, eating only one protein bar a day. “I sit at about 145 pounds when I’m healthy, and at one point I was 118,” she wrote. “I dropped from a size 4-6 to a size 00.”

Credit: Hannah Brown/Instagram

Pre-‘Bachelorette’ Relationships, Losing Her Virginity

One of Brown’s first serious boyfriends, Tucker, was possessive and emotionally abusive, telling her she was fat and trying to pressure her to have sex. Brown’s longest pre-Bachelorette romance was with someone she called Brady in the book (adding in the notes section that she changed the names of her non-famous friends and beaus). When she originally started seeing him in high school, he had a girlfriend. When they got together for the second time, she lost her virginity to him. “We’d built up our desire for each other for a long time, and gotten to know each other from all those nights making out in the back seat,” she wrote. “Our first time was two people who loved each other, and it was so sweet, and so pure, and even though it was sex out of marriage, it felt safe to me.”

While Brady cheated on Brown with his old girlfriend their senior year, the twosome continued an unhealthy on and off relationship through college. While Brown had another serious boyfriend, Austin, at the University of Alabama, she always found herself back with Brady. Once Brady learned she had sex with Austin, he told her she wasn’t wife material anymore. Brady was also secretly seeing someone else at the time.

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Mental Health Struggles

Brown suffered from depression her sophomore year of college and felt like her parents told her to get over it, saying, “You have no reason to be sad.” After a meltdown at the beach, they sent her to her family doctor — not a therapist or psychiatrist — and he gave her medication. She didn’t take it, however. After encouragement from her sorority sisters her junior year, Brown tried the meds. “The medication didn’t have any negative effects. I was fine. And while the meds didn’t fix everything for me, they definitely allowed me to care more. To invest in my life again,” she wrote.

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‘DWTS’ Drama With Alan Bersten

Following a breakdown over ABC including her fight with Luke Parker about her windmill sex with Peter Weber in the fantasy suite episode — and her breakup with Jed Wyatt — the network offered her a role on Dancing With the Stars to “make it better.” Brown recalled being “emotionally unwell” while competing on the ABC series, feeling like a failure following her broken engagement and Tyler Cameron moving on with Gigi Hadid.

“Alan kept saying, ‘You have to trust me if we’re going to do this.’ But trust was the last thing I was prepared to give a man I’d just met,” she wrote, referring to her relationship with the pro as volatile. “As a dance partner, standing strong, I came to trust Alan more and more every week. I think that showed in our performances. Our chemistry on the stage led to the press speculating that we had something more going on between us, but we didn’t. Off the dance floor, we were not compatible people.”

Brown noted that she and Bersten either “acted like best friends and true partners, or we couldn’t stand each other.” She also claimed he’d push her too far in rehearsal. “I’d say, ‘Get out of my face. I’m not doing this,’ and he’d say, ‘You’re lazy! You’re not trying!’”

While the duo took home the mirrorball trophy, Brown felt as empty and lonely as ever.

Credit: Courtesy Patrick Brown/Instagram

Patrick’s Overdose

In March 2020, on the same day that Cameron’s mother died, Brown’s brother overdosed. “I’ll be honest: my first reaction when my mom told me the news was anger,” she wrote, admitting that her relationship with Patrick had “always been strained” and he was running in a bad crowd in his early 20s. According to Hannah, Patrick unknowingly took an opioid that was laced with three times the lethal dose of fentanyl.

Hannah paid for Patrick to go to rehab in Texas after making money through The Bachelorette and Dancing With the Stars. “They say the Lord works in mysterious ways. In that moment, everything I had been through, all the pain and embarrassment and shaming I’d endured, somehow seemed worth it,” she wrote.

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N-Word Scandal

The week of May 11, 2020 — the anniversary of the murder of her aunt and cousins and the 1-year anniversary of accepting a proposal from Wyatt — Brown came under fire for saying the N-word on Instagram Live while singing the lyrics to “Rockstar.” She admitted that she was addicted to the spotlight after her time on the show and the attention she and Cameron were getting from their quarantine TikToks. After drinking all day since 11 a.m., she was so drunk on Instagram Live that she didn’t even realize she said it. The next morning, she felt sick as her messages were flooded with people calling her out. Instead of hiring a “fixer” like she was encouraged to do, Brown hired an ethnic studies professor and got a “crash course” on history for several weeks “between three and eight hours a day,” calling “herself a product of an education system and culture that doesn’t teach this history.”

“The blowback from that one moment on Instagram cost me all of my endorsement deals (which was my only source of income) and so much more,” she wrote. “It was beyond upsetting to be canceled by people who don’t know me. I cried my eyes out for days on end. But I was also humbled by the education that resulted from that moment, which may have never happened had I not gone through this very public lesson in accountability.”