Melissa Etheridge felt ‘guilt’ and ‘shame’ after son’s death from opioid addiction: ‘I did the best I could to keep myself alive’
Come to her window.
Rock star Melissa Etheridge takes a leaf out of Johnny Cash’s book and performs at a prison in her new docuseries, “Melissa Etheridge: I’m Not Broken.”
“I grew up in Leavenworth, Kansas, and most people know it from all the prisons,” Etheridge, 63, told The Post.
“I could see [the federal penitentiary] through my backyard. When I was 7 years old, Johnny Cash came to play there . . . At the time, I thought prisons must be a place of great entertainment.”
The Grammy-winning singer and musician performed there as a teenager, “And the audiences were so incredibly enthusiastic,” she recalled.
“It really stayed with me. As I got my own career going and started making albums, I thought, ‘I want to go back. I want to go to a women’s penitentiary and give them music.’ ”
Premiering today on Paramount+, the two-episode docuseries follows Etheridge as she fosters friendships with the inmates at the Topeka Correctional Facility in Kansas, prepares for her concert – interspersed with footage of it – and discusses her son Beckett’s death at age 21, which happened in 2020 from causes relating to opioid addiction.
Etheridge, who came out as a lesbian in 1993 and has been married to “Nurse Jackie” co-creator Linda Wallem since 2014, is a mother of four: she had Beckett and Bailey Jean, 27 (using David Crosby as a sperm donor) with her ex partner, Julie Cypher, and she also had twins Johnnie Rose and Miller Steven, 17, with her ex partner, Tammy Lynn Michaels.
“About 20 years ago, I went through breast cancer, and it changed my outlook on life . . . Part of that is understanding that I can’t save anyone,” Etheridge told The Post, reflecting on Beckett’s death.
“Everyone’s here to make their own choices. And all of us have our own things to learn and grow from, even my children. I’m not here to tell them, ‘This is what you’re going to do with your life,’ that’s not my business,” she continued. “My business is to love them, to feed and water them and maybe show them that the world is an amazing place where you can create.”
Etheridge noted that Beckett’s passing was “a real difficult thing to deal with.”
“It doesn’t mean that I didn’t feel guilt, and I didn’t feel shame. Of course I did at the time, especially being so public,” she explained. “But, the years of a connection with myself made it possible for me to find a light in that dark tunnel and go, ‘Yes, I lost my son. I did everything I could. I did the best I could to keep myself alive. And now that he’s gone, he’s out of pain. He’s in this nonphysical place that I believe is pain free.’ And so, me suffering makes no sense, because he’s out of pain. So that’s really how I do that.”
On-screen, Etheridge exchanges letters with and fosters friendships with several of the inmates – most of whom are in prison for drug-related causes.
“This was right after my son died. And so, the connection was deeper now,” she explained. “Now the film, it wasn’t just me going into prison playing music for incarcerated people. This was, ‘Wow, I can really relate to where you’re at.’ ”
Etheridge’s friendships with the inmates continued after production on the documentary ended
“I’m going to see them again… it really makes me rethink how we think about crime and punishment. Ninety-eight or 99 percent of the women are incarcerated because of drug addiction brought on by early trauma. It’s not like we need to punish these people because they did something wrong,” she told The Post. “They need help . . . I enjoy talking with these people, and some of them are coming up for parole. So I really want to support them.”
“Melissa Etheridge: I’m Not Broken” premieres July 9, 2024 on Paramount+.
