If they gave out an award for Most Improved Reality Star, June Shannon would be hoisting the trophy for the second year in a row.
There was a time, not all that long ago, when it looked like Mama June wasn’t long for this world.
But these days, Shannon is sober, healthy, and making great strides toward repairing her relationships with her daughters.
It’s hard to pinpoint an exact moment when she turned her life around, but dumping Geno Doak was definitely a major step forward for June.
In a new interview with TooFab, June was asked about her breakup and her recovery, and she proudly reported that she’s been sober for over two years!
“I’m actually good, still good with [her sobriety]. 29 months straight sober. If you watch the first episode, it’s a tearjerker,” she told the outlet.
June went on to reveal that the new season of her WeTV reality show will focus on the end of her relationship with Doak.
She says there were several times when she came close to ending the relationship but decided to remain, and she admits that viewers might judge her harshly in those moments.
“It’s easier for an outsider looking in to say, ‘You can leave, you can leave, you can leave,’ when it isn’t really honestly the case,” June told TooFab.
“You get so, so sucked into it and so like, ‘It’s amazing,’ because you try to make excuses for things that are happening.”
Shannon says one of her reasons for staying with Geno for so long was fear of what he might do to her family.
“He knew where they lived at, he knew how to get a hold of them, he knew where I would go. He knew how close me and the girls was, he knew I would run to them and I did not want to put them in jeopardy either,” she recalled.
June added that she regrets dropping assault charges against Geno, and she told the DA as much following one of her arrests.
“Look, I should have never dismissed the domestic violence charges the day we got locked up, March 13, 2019, along with the drug charges. I should have never dismissed those charges but I was scared,” she said.
“I went in front of the Grand Jury [in 2019] like, ‘Everything’s amazing.’ It wasn’t. I went down and told the DA, ‘Look, I should have never stopped those domestic violence charges.'”
The season premiere of Mama June: Road to Redemption documents the exact moment that June left Geno, and not surprisingly, it wasn’t easy.
It seems that June fled in the middle of the night while Geno was passed out.
After she gained her independence, Shannon disappeared for three weeks before finally returning home and explaining to the production crew that she had dumped Doak.
“I don’t even like talking about it now because it puts me in a headspace I’m not in anymore, a year ago, my production company kind of knew it was going to a head, especially after I went into recovery,” she recalled in her interview with TooFab.
“But I was like, ‘I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine.’ Even in my addiction, I was ready to walk away [from him] then but didn’t know how to. That’s the crazy part about it.”
June says her addiction and her relationship with Geno went hand-in-hand, “it would have been easier for me to escape with the drugs like I had in the past.”
As for Doak, he recently revealed that after June broke up with him, he narrowly survived a suicide attempt.
In an in-depth interview, he explained to TMZ that he’s in a much better place these days.
Hopefully, these two will continue to keep their distance from one another.
The new season of Mama June: Road to Redemption premieres Friday, May 13 on WE tv.
