How I Escaped Jami G’s Shadow

Friends and complete strangers prodded me about my mom's views, mostly because they assumed that I shared them. Galvanized by a debate on the radio one morning, I emulated her by phoning in to her show with my opinion, perhaps to prove that I had one of my own.

I picked myself apart and tried to reassemble a new me antithetical to Jami G. But the harder I worked to differentiate myself, the more like her I became in the eyes of her friends and followers. My whole life I'd been told I was the spitting image of my father, but when people learned I was Jami G's daughter, I was told I looked just like her. So I rebelled, of course. Mom was a vegetarian; I fell in love with bacon. She wore her blond hair bobbed; I let my brown tresses grow. But I wasn't always successful. I had long fancied myself a writer and journalist. I filled notebooks with tiny tales, observations and reportage, and then I hid them beneath my mattress—like wads of cash during the Great Depression. But when I told people about my ambitions, I heard, "Just like your mother."

No, I wanted to say, just like me.

Sure, my mother and I shared a journalist's ardor for elevating the everyday, but I was determined to cut my own path. Since Mom wasn't involved in TV news, during high school I interned at both networks in town. A pop radio station gave me my own weekly entertainment segment. People who heard it swore that my voice was Jami G's. I was flattered, but I wanted my own voice.

I decided that skipping town was the only way I could truly be me. My first week at college in nearby Athens, I walked the campus without overtly being my mother's daughter—until I met my political-science teacher, who was a frequent guest on her radio show.

It was only when I trekked farther up the coast to New York that I escaped the shadow of my celebrity mother. She encouraged me to go, saying that finding a job you love means never working a day in your life.

When I got laid off from my first gig as a television producer, I wiped my tears and picked up the phone. Mom assured me that with hard work I'd find something new, and she was right. I was farther away, but feeling more like her than ever. It took a few years and a thousand miles, but I finally figured out that it's not such a bad thing to be like the people you love.

Yarrow is working on a memoir called “Southern Fried Jewish Girl.” She lives in Brooklyn.

© 2009