I Choose Me

Jennie Garth's memoir traces her path from teenage actress to reinvented woman at fifty-four, organized around the mantra she first spoke as her character Kelly Taylor on Beverly Hills, 90210: "I choose me." Part personal history, part self-help guide, the book moves between candid recollections of Garth's most painful experiences and the therapeutic, spiritual, and professional practices she adopted in their aftermath.

Garth opens with the memory of rewatching the 90210 pilot in fall 2020, alone on her couch, nearly thirty years after its premiere, while preparing to record a rewatch podcast she developed with costar Tori Spelling. She reflects on her castmates, including her complicated bond with Shannen Doherty, whom the show's love-triangle storyline pitted against her on and off screen, though they later forged a mature friendship. She reveals for the first time that Luke Perry was her first love, describing years of intense flirtation and unresolved romantic tension, and the way watching him direct the same attention toward other actresses deepened her insecurities. She recounts learning of Shannen's death while traveling with her husband, Dave, and later describes the devastating shock of Luke's fatal stroke in 2019.

Garth did not grow up dreaming of acting. Her career began at a beauty pageant in Laughlin, Nevada, where a talent manager named Randy James spotted her potential. She took acting classes in Arizona, moved with her mother to the San Fernando Valley, and landed guest spots on several shows before being cast in 90210 at eighteen.

The book's emotional center is the collapse of her second marriage. Garth recounts waking up disoriented in a Phoenix hospital after having her stomach pumped. She had mixed minibar alcohol with anxiety medication following a devastating therapy session with her second husband, an actor and the father of her three daughters: Luca, Lola, and Fiona. At the session, the therapist asked Garth directly why she wanted to be with someone who did not love her, and Garth realized her husband had come to end the marriage definitively in the presence of a third party. Afterward, her best friend Adele, a licensed therapist, arranged for Garth to enter a rehabilitation center for six days, followed by nearly a month at an outpatient program where she underwent daily therapy using modalities including cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), and somatic therapy (a body-focused approach to psychotherapy). She describes the excruciating pain of being separated from her young daughters during this period.

Garth provides brief context for her first marriage, to a drummer she met while working on 90210. They married when she was in her early twenties, but the relationship faltered. She met her second husband on the set of a 1996 Lifetime movie, and by twenty-four she was a mother, throwing herself into family life and describing motherhood as her truest calling.

After returning from treatment, Garth faced the devastating cycle of joint custody, falling apart during weeks without her daughters and turning to wine and isolation. She eventually began treating those weeks as opportunities for rebuilding. A period of intense seeking followed: she traveled to Bali on a women's spiritual excursion, spending much of the trip alone, journaling and visiting local healers. Back home, she enrolled in Landmark, a personal development program. A conversation with costar Cameron Mathison led her to the Kadampa Meditation Center in Los Angeles, where she attended Buddhism classes for a year. The Buddhist concept of samsara, the endless cycle of suffering and clinging, helped her understand her own reactive patterns. She drew on the Japanese art of kintsugi, repairing broken pottery with gold, as a metaphor for rebuilding herself into something more beautiful because of the cracks.

Garth examines the limiting beliefs and scarcity mindset that kept her stuck. She reveals she was diagnosed with clinical depression at eighteen and has been on antidepressant medication for most of her adult life. In 2020, she underwent a SPECT (single-photon emission computed tomography) brain scan with psychiatrist Dr. Daniel Amen. The scan revealed evidence of a past brain injury, likely from two on-set accidents during 90210, and liberated her from the belief that her poor memory and anxiety were personal failings rather than physical realities. She describes the slow process of forgiving her second ex-husband, acknowledging that his decision to end their marriage set her on a path she never would have pursued otherwise.

After a series of mismatched dates, Garth's therapist Wade encouraged her to write a list of nonnegotiables for a future partner. Eight months later, at the end of 2014, she was set up on a double date with Dave. They got engaged three months after meeting and married three months after that at her ranch in Santa Ynez. Shortly after, Garth discovered she was pregnant, but they lost the pregnancy after four months. Believing Dave wanted a biological child, she underwent in vitro fertilization (IVF) despite declining egg quality. The process was physically grueling and emotionally devastating, and she and Dave failed to grieve together. After a fourth failed pregnancy, Dave packed up and left.

Garth spiraled. One night, her eldest daughter Luca came home to find her on the bedroom floor surrounded by broken glass from smashed picture frames, engaging in self-harm. Luca took the glass away and later helped her mother establish a rigorous self-care schedule. Dave filed for divorce in April 2019; Garth learned about it from a TMZ headline. After a spiritual trip to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, she returned feeling shifted. That July, she and Dave met at a rented bungalow in Joshua Tree. Over a weekend with no internet or television, they talked for hours about where they lost each other. Garth told Dave the truth: She did not want another baby. Dave told her she was his person. They decided not to sign the divorce papers. Garth credits her therapist Wade's Circle/Square/Circle concept, the idea that two whole individuals each maintain their own identity while co-creating a shared relationship space, with transforming her understanding of healthy partnership.

The remaining chapters chronicle Garth's professional reinvention. She and Spelling launched the 9021OMG rewatch podcast in November 2020 and a home decor line called the BFF Collection. As her vision evolved, Garth moved on to create the I Choose Me podcast, seeking deeper conversations about self-discovery and reinvention. QVC contacted her about starting a fashion line, fulfilling a dream from her vision board. She also co-created and executive produced the meta-reboot BH90210 with Spelling, a project that took on new urgency after Luke Perry's death.

Throughout the book, Garth addresses body image, aging, and motherhood with equal candor. She describes early struggles with disordered eating in Hollywood, a breast augmentation at twenty-four influenced by the era's beauty standards, and the ongoing tension between wanting to age naturally and working in an industry that ties appearance to employment. She discusses perimenopause, the transitional phase leading to menopause, as well as hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and two hip replacements for osteoarthritis, framing each as part of her journey toward self-acceptance. She recounts her daughter Lola's terrifying childhood diagnosis of Still's disease, a rare autoimmune form of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, and the challenges of raising daughters in Los Angeles while instilling the values of her rural Illinois upbringing. She also reframes her deep emotional sensitivity, long dismissed as being too emotional, as a strength she calls being "emotionFULL."

The book closes with Garth declaring her fifties a "building decade" and framing choosing herself not as a single decision but as a daily recommitment to self-awareness, courage, and intentional living. She affirms that it is never too late to begin again.