In a lengthy Instagram post spanning several slides, Hulk Hogan’s daughter spoke her truth and explained that she stepped back from her public career in order to maintain a sense of privacy.

Brooke broke her silence in a lengthy message on Instagram posted on Thursday, March 27.

“I try very hard to ignore issues surrounding my family in hopes I might have peace in my life,” Brooke, 36, wrote. “Sadly, I’ve intentionally made myself smaller in my professional career in music and TV simply to dodge the public negativity surrounding my family that has continuously and relentlessly overshadowed anything I do.”

“If it were just me, I would continue to take the hits and shrink even smaller to avoid the dangers of speaking publicly. But I have my own family now and it’s affecting more than just me at this point,” she continued.

Brooke married Stephen Oleksy in 2022 and welcomed twins Oliver and Molly in January.

Although Linda mourned that it has been eight years since she had last spoken to her daughter, Brooke explained that she had separate reasons for going no contact with each of her parents.

“I have completely separate reasons for going no contact with each of my parents,” she wrote. “No contact with my mom has nothing to do with my dad, and no contact with my father has nothing to do with my mother. … This decision was made based purely on how they have each dealt with me my entire life.”

She also revealed that she was “extremely verbally and mentally abused” throughout her childhood, noting that it would “frequently turn physical.” She emphasized that the accusations were “not pointed” at her parents but stopped short of naming her abuser.

“This vicious pattern has robbed me of any sense of self-esteem or confidence I’ve been trained to pretend to have,” Brooke told her followers. “It took me many years to figure out the things that were seemingly done ‘for me’ really benefited someone else in a greater capacity. … No child or human should ever experience something like this.”

“I longed for a normal family, but it never came to fruition,” she claimed. “I’ve repeatedly held my hand out to help them, only to have them pull me into the darkness with them. I’ve set boundaries that were not respected, and at this point, I can truly do no more.”

She explained that she has been to therapy in order to “break the chain” and has cut off communication with certain family members as a result.

“As much as I not only understand and have empathy for their own struggles, I absolutely LOVE them with every fiber of my being — which deep down I think they know,” Brooke said. “My heart hurts every day, and not a day passes [that] it does not affect me. Inside of me, there is a little girl who desperately wants and needs her mom and dad.”

“No one wants this, to feel so much pain and not have parents … [and] I hope, one day, they realize, appreciate and respect why I’ve chosen to remain as quiet as possible,” she added.

Brooke closed off her post, writing, “Life is so precious. I want so much to be able to enjoy what’s important… my children and my life I have worked so hard to create and protect – and I hope everyone can give me the chance to do that without injecting any more poison into it.”

Sadly, Brooke is showing off the dark side of being a nepo baby. Her comments make it clear that she was pushed into the spotlight in order to live up to her famous family name, and she was often put down if she did not live up to their high standards.

While no one but Brooke will know what she went through, the best thing to do is to ignore her mother’s desperate attempts for attention and sympathy. By Linda’s own admission, Brooke hasn’t spoken to her mother in eight years, which means she was not there to see her daughter get married and has likely never met her grandchildren. At this point, she likely never will.

Although she wants out of the spotlight, it seems her mother has now turned to the media as a way of trying to turn the narrative against Brooke and forcing her to respond, revealing far more information than she wants to.

As Brooke wrote in her lengthy message, “You can’t control how others treat you, but you can control how you treat others and cope with things.” Although she can’t control what her mother does, we, as a society, can support Brooke by ignoring the sympathy card her mother is trying to play.

As the saying goes: You can’t choose your relatives, but you can choose your family. Now that Brooke is a mother, she is trying to raise her family out of the public eye, and we should give her the freedom to do just that.