Amber Portwood is fighting back against Teen Mom fans who are accusing her of traumatizing her teenage daughter.
Amber— who has been logging some serious hours on TikTok Live over the past few months— was on the social media platform earlier this week to defend herself against fans who blame her for the issues her 16-year-old daughter Leah has stated she’s experiencing. As The Ashley previously reported, during a recent episode of Teen Mom: The Next Chapter, Leah— who is currently estranged from Amber— stated that she has “abandonment issues” due to Amber coming in and out of her life. During the same episode, Leah’s stepmom Kristina Shirley stated that it had been more than four months since Amber had contacted them.
During the Live, Amber denied that her actions resulted in Leah having trauma. She also denied that she went no-contact with her daughter for four months.
“I didn’t go four months no-contact with my daughter!” Amber protested, before admitting that she did stay away, but that it wasn’t because she wanted to.
“No, I was told to stay away. Not to stay away… but all that stuff,” Amber said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I would never do that actually. I want to have my daughter with me. I would love to have my daughter with me. I would love to do mom and daughter things. It’s up to her. She doesn’t want to be around me at the moment, while she’s in therapy. I understand.
“My life is filmed, and everything that I’m saying is the truth,” she continued.
Amber got angry when someone on the Live told her that she has put Leah “through enough” already.
“I put her through enough!?” Amber repeated. “We’ve already talked about everything from the past. She doesn’t remember anything, guys. She said it on the show that she didn’t remember anything bad…she didn’t remember anything but she would watch clips [of the show] online. And she said that’s what she hated.”
Amber went on to state that Leah doesn’t actually even have trauma.
“So it’s not trauma. She doesn’t have trauma. Thank God,” she said. “She’s had a rough life, yeah. But guys, not everything is trauma. And it’s not denial. You can’t call that trauma.
“I didn’t beat her,” Amber continued. “She’s traumatized about what?! “No, she’s not traumatized because of me. I didn’t do anything to her like that.”
Amber did acknowledge that having Leah around so much yelling early on in her life was not good for her, but she argued that Leah was only around the yelling between her and Leah’s dad Gary Shirley for “less than three years.” (As fans will remember, the reason the “yelling around Leah” stopped when she was three was because Amber went to prison in June 2012.)
“It’s not trauma, Jesus Lord, guys!” Amber said. “It was a couple of years of me being gone [in prison], but ever since then I was in her life. What are you talking about? You guys keep forgetting I went to school for this.”
Amber began to get angry at anyone who even suggested that Leah may have issues from Amber being in and out of her life during her childhood.
“Just shut up and quit!” Amber yelled. “…you guys are talking about [me being in] denial and all this s**t. I’m not gonna listen to this stuff! I lived the life! Jesus! Who’s traumatized? Who’s a victim? WHO? Nobody ever said I was a victim, and nobody ever made excuses.”
Amber— who also shares son James with her ex Andrew Glennon— stated that she only cares how her kids feel about her, and not the show’s fans.
“Y’all are not my kids…like the day my son wants to tell me that I’m not there for him, that’s what my son will tell me,” she said. “The day my daughter wants to say she’s pissed off at me because of my past, and me being a drug addict and having mental illnesses and going to prison and things like that, then that’s what the f**k she’s saying right now! Like, get over it!”
Amber then compared the childhood she had herself to what Leah has experienced.
“Damn, I had a way worse life than she can imagine,” she said. “And [worse] than more than half of you guys did. You can’t sit there and do that with your kids. You can’t sit there and pamper to the point of, you apologize for years and the people are being pushed away from you and you’re still apologizing.”
Amber denied that karma will get her, as one fan predicted.
“Karma for what? You can’t have karma [get you] if you didn’t do anything, you stop doing the negative things,” Amber said.
As The Ashley previously reported, on this week’s episode of ‘Teen Mom: The Next Chapter,’ several of Amber’s co-stars— Jade Cline and Cheyenne Floyd— spoke out on-camera about how upset they get watching Amber’s treatment of Leah. Jade— whose relationship with her own mom, Christy Smith, has been estranged on-and-off for years, due to Christy’s issues— was particularly mad about Amber being more devastated about her fiancé, Gary Wayt, ditching her than the loss of her relationship with Leah.
“After all that energy put into a man instead of a child, to me, that’s what don’t sit right with me,” Jade said. “It was triggering for me because I have a mother who is, like, so in herself, and herself is what is Number 1. And it makes me sick to my f**king stomach!”
“It’s hard to watch the behavior towards Leah,” Cheyenne agreed. “And then it’s hard to see [Amber] blame…”
“The whole energy that was put into this dude— the crying, the meltdown— I’m like, that should be put into your family, because at the end of the day, you can always get a new man but you can never replace your children,” Jade said.
Amber has not yet addressed what Jade and Cheyenne said about her on this week’s episode.
