I feel like my marriage came apart because of me, not because of anyone else. I can take responsibility. I knew I was a good mom. I thought I was adult enough to be a wife and a mother, but really I wasn't. Tommy bore the brunt of that. It was this constant pressure and it was hard for both of us to take. We broke up when my son was a little more than 18 months old. I came out of a divorced home. I did what I knew, which was to take my son and leave.

All of us have been in situations where we've lost our confidence, even the greatest leaders in the world. We are at the end of the day human — I have no problem telling you, yeah [I have days when] I think, you know, What am I doing? Remember why you're doing what you're doing; talk yourself off the ledge. You know you have to become your own best counselor because really no one is going to take the time and the energy to understand your problems quite like you can.

After a year of working in the restaurant, one night I decided to slip Tom my telephone number. We were standing in front of the giant fireplace. 'Did you hear I was single?' I asked. The next day his secretary called me and said, 'Mr. Girardi would like to know if you're free to have dinner this evening.' 'Absolutely not,' I told her. 'Tell Mr. Girardi if he wants to take me out on a date, he needs to call me himself and ask me and give me enough time to prepare.' You know how men are, especially if they are successful. They expect you to drop everything right away. That's not how I work, I don't care who you are. He did call me back himself, and he asked me out on a date like a gentleman.

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On their date, my father said to Renee, "Tomorrow I'm going to come by your parents' house, pick you up, and we're going to go hunt for apartments. The three of us will live together and be a little family." It was really romantic at the drive-in, so this was all fabulous. He dropped her off at my grandparents' house. The next day, my mother waited and waited. He never came. He never called. Finally, she called her friend, Janet, who had recently married Nicolas' brother Gabriel. She asked if Janet had seen my father. "Oh honey, he's moved to California. He left this morning," Janet said.

One of my first jobs at eighteen was singing with a group called The Flirts when one of their members was on a leave of absence. They had a hit with the song "Jukebox (Don't Put Another Dime)" and there was always a three-girl lineup, but it changed a bit. I filled in to record a couple of tracks with them.

Money doesn't make you confident, material things don't make you confident. Your work ethic makes you confident; your achievements make you confident. It's about setting goals, and it's about whether or not you reach them. I know a lot of people with money who are not happy, who are insecure, who are basically train wrecks.

New York City is such an awesome place with a lot of great artists doing great things at the top level. There was so much going on then and so much going on now. It was really ‘the’ place to go to hone your artistry. I became a member of a couple of girl groups early on and performed at a few clubs around there. But basically, I was doing any job I could just to stay alive. A lot of extra work. I was a starving artist.

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I think it's something that I had to teach myself because growing up wasn't always a barrel of laughs. I was insecure and I had a lot of self-doubts, which is why I tell myself I can do it and that I earned it. I think you kind of become your own best cheerleader. I mean, obviously, my mom and my grandmother were big cheerleaders of mine, but at the end of the day, you have to be your own cheerleader—every day. Otherwise, it's not going to work out if you don't believe in yourself. I think a lot of it, too, is looking around and saying 'Why not me?' You know, 'Why not me?' I mean, if they can do it I can do it. There's nothing that special about anyone, really.

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