Sister Wives star Kody Brown shared how he feels his family dynamic has shifted throughout the years: “I’m trying to redefine my life.”
Kody Brown is looking back at his actions.
During the Oct. 29 episode of Sister Wives, the TLC star—who has been open about his estrangement with several of his older children—reflected on what led to his strained family dynamic.
“We might have been more successful,” Kody explained in his confessional, per People, “had we been in different homes with the kids growing up like they were cousins.”
And the 54-year-old, who has 18 kids with wife Robyn Brown and exes Christine Brown, Meri Brown and Janelle Brown, noted that he believes “some of the failures” in his polygamous relationships could be due to him “expecting too much from the family with this one family idea.”
One promise that Kody feels has not been kept was the family’s “commitment celebration where we wrote our mission statement.”
Despite jotting down “this idea for ourselves” when Robyn joined the family in 2010, recent years have made the father of 18 feel that everyone has “just shredded that mission statement.”
These days, Kody is working on coming to terms with his new family dynamic—including his 2021 split from Christine and his 2022 separations from Janelle and Meri.
“What has happened with our family is very sad to me,” he continued. “It’s just one of those things that’s happened. I have to move on. But there is sort of this strange place that I’m in where it feels odd. I’m trying to redefine my life.”
Meanwhile, Kody’s new normal has also led him to shy away from worship. As he put it, he would “almost be too embarrassed to show my head at church because of the just the struggles my family has had.”
He further expressed that despite having “always been a man of faith,” he’s “struggled for a long time.”
“I’m not a fit in my old religion,” he shared. “We’re in, let me use a term, no pun intended, we’re in limbo.”
Kody’s confession comes on the heels of speaking out about his estrangement from two of his adult children.
“I’ve reached out to Garrison and Gabriel,” he said in a confessional on the Oct. 15 episode of the reality show. “I reached out to them just before Christmas and I reached out to them after. No, they’re blocking me.”
In her own confessional, Janelle shared her perspective on what happened between Kody and his kids.
“I can observe that Kody seems to have trouble relating to his older children and he seems to dote on the younger children,” she said, “and when my children were younger, it was very easy for him to be a father, right, because he was still kind of this important. He was important to them. His opinion mattered to them, his guidance mattered to them and now, because they question a little bit, I think it might be harder for Kody to feel like he’s respected.”
Sister Wives airs Sundays at 10 p.m. on TLC.