Highlights of Rosie O’Donnell’s chat with Oprah

For the first time in 13 years, Rosie O’Donnell returned to The Oprah Show to reflect on love, life and the ever-evolving definition of family. Since she walked off The View, Rosie says she’s been at home, trying to figure out what to do with the second chapter of her life.

“I think as a child I never thought I would live past 40, because my mother didn’t,” she told Oprah. “And my goal was to do everything I could before I was 40 and then retire and wait for the doctor to say, ‘Well, you’re going to die.'”

When that didn’t happen, this 47-year-old mother of four began to look inward. Like many women, Rosie says she wanted to find a way to balance work and family.

Even after her ex Kelli Carpenter moved out more than two years ago, Rosie says they tried to save their relationship:  “We tried very hard to make it work in different configurations and to try to stay together and allow each other to grow and evolve and find joy,” she says.

Even after a breakup, Rosie says like most lesbian couples, they stay connected: “It sounds maybe a little bit elitist, and I’m not trying to say it’s better. I just think it’s a different paradigm. [For] women, usually in relationships, the emotional connection is really the most intense, and so when they break up, I have found they stay connected. Every woman that I have ever been with, besides one, is still in my life.”

Rosie says she did feel unspoken pressure to stay with Kelli and be a role model for other gay couples.

“I remember when Melissa [Etheridge] and Julie broke up, I called Melissa and said: ‘Come on. There’s so few,'” she said. “And she said, ‘Ro, your first goal in life is to be true to yourself, and your children will look at you and know when you’re living an authentic life.'”

Rosie says this resonated with her, and from then on, she approached her divorce with honesty. “I wanted to show people that gay families are just like every other family, and sometimes, divorce happens,” she says. “No one ever goes into a marriage expecting or wanting a divorce. … It was a difficult thing to get through. I have to say it was the most difficult thing in my adult life.”

One night, Rosie says she was crying in her room when her oldest son, 14-year-old Parker, came in to see what was wrong. “He’s like, ‘What’s up, Mom?’ And I was like, ‘I can’t imagine that you’re not going to be here, and I’m just going to miss you so much.’ And he said: ‘Mom, I’m always going to be your son. It doesn’t matter where I am. You’re okay. I love you. We’re connected. It’s all right,'” she says. “He’s like my little Yoda.”

Now, Rosie says she and Kelli have found a free-flowing way to share equal time with their children without really ever being without them.

After her mother died (Rosie was just 10) and her father was too grief-stricken to care for his children, Rosie says women who lived in her Long Island neighborhood stepped in as surrogate mothers.

“I was raised with love, compassion and grace by women who were not connected to me by biological means, and that’s exactly what I ended up doing,” she said.

From age 10 until her freshman year in college, Rosie says she never spoke of her mother’s death. In response, Rosie’s parenting style is the opposite of her father’s. In her home, every child is encouraged to share his or her feelings. “In fact, it’s to the point that it almost annoys my children now,” she says. “I’m constantly saying: ‘Are you okay? What are you feeling? Can we talk?'”

Even though she and Kelli are no longer a couple, Rosie says she wants her children to know that family is forever.

“[I want them to know] they can survive challenges, even unexpected ones that are terrifically sad,” she said. “And that change is inevitable, and you can always survive it. … There is always something new in the future, and you don’t know what it’s going to be, but it’s got the potential for tremendous joy.”

Rosie says her blog actually brought her and new current love, Tracy Kachtick-Anders, together. After Tracy wrote to Rosie and asked if she wanted to trade art, Rosie read an article about this single, lesbian mom. She discovered that Tracy had six children, five she adopted from foster care and a baby she gave birth to, a boy who has Down syndrome. The article also said Tracy worked for gay foster care rights and liked to surf, garden and recycle.

“I wrote her and I said, ‘Are you for real or is this a joke?'” Rosie says. “Because if I had gone on Match.com and put ‘What do you want in a person?’ it would have been everything that was in that article.”

As soon as Tracy ties up loose ends in Texas, Rosie says they plan on moving in together and blending their families. That would give them a total of 10 kids under one roof!

“I said to my kids, ‘Your mommy does a lot of things that people don’t understand.’ When I was adopting children, and I didn’t have a partner, people thought that was crazy,” she said. “My kids know me, and when I told Parker, I had told him about her. Then I told him, ‘I’m going to be dating her.’ And he goes, ‘Well, Mom, it sounds pretty perfect.'”

Source: Oprah.com