Jennie Garth, 54, Says ‘I Choose Me’ Took 30 Years To Understand — ‘I Really Started to Self-Reflect on How I Got Here’

If you grew up watching Kelly Taylor navigate the love triangles of Beverly Hills, 90210, you probably remember the line. It was 1995. Faced with a choice between Brandon and Dylan, Kelly looked at both of them and said three words that would echo for decades: “I choose me.”

What you might not know is that the woman who delivered that line didn’t fully understand it herself — not for almost 30 years.

In a recent episode of What Matters with Liz, Jennie Garth opens up about how that scripted moment, written by Jessica Klein, slowly transformed into the guiding principle of her midlife. Her new book, “I Choose Me: Chasing Joy, Finding Purpose & Embracing Reinvention,” charts the long, sometimes brutal road from delivering those words as a young actress to actually living them as a woman in her 50s.

“I didn’t really even know how deep that statement was until I was in my early 50s, honestly,” Garth says.

For women navigating empty nests, career pivots or that quietly persistent question of “what’s next?” — her story may sound less like a celebrity memoir and more like a permission slip.

Watch Episode 10 right here! ‘What Matters with Jennie Garth: Purpose, Healing & Choosing Me’

The moment the line caught up with her

Garth describes a turning point where the noise of her life finally started to quiet. After decades of being directed on how to look, what to say and who to be, she found herself doing something she’d rarely allowed: pausing.

“I started to slow down enough to connect with the things in my life so far that had made me, molded me into who I am,” she says. “And I looked at all the past triumphs and all the past failures. And I really started to self-reflect on how I got here — and also, where the hell do I go next?”

That second question — where do I go next? — is the one so many women in midlife are sitting with right now. The kids are grown or going. The careers built around other people’s needs feel suddenly small. And the silence that opens up can feel less like freedom and more like free fall.

Garth doesn’t pretend otherwise.

“Quiet is scary,” she admits. “Quiet isn’t what happens when there’s momentum… There’s a lot going on and there’s a lot of distractions and a lot of opinions and perspectives. And it’s, it takes like just really ripping the band-aid off to get to the injury, to get to what needs the help.”

Momentum vs. intention

For most of her life, Garth says, she was carried by momentum, not direction. She didn’t grow up dreaming of acting. She didn’t have a five-year plan. Things simply happened, and she rode the wave.

“Momentum back then meant having no plan,” she reflects. “I didn’t want to become an actress. I didn’t have big goals. I didn’t think big picture.”

That worked — until it didn’t. Around 50, something shifted. She realized her life was, as she puts it, “more than halfway over,” and she didn’t want to coast through what was left.

“I realized it’s time for you to take control, take the reins, and start choosing to trust your instincts and start choosing to have more direction in your choices in life,” she says.

That’s the pivot from momentum to intention. And for many midlife women, it’s the first time they’ve ever asked: What do I want my next chapter to look like?

When everything collapsed

Garth is honest about the fact that her “I choose me” moment didn’t arrive on a yoga mat. It arrived after collapse.

During her divorce from her daughters’ father, she says she leaned on medication to manage anxiety and pain, isolated herself and eventually woke up in a hospital with no memory of how she got there.

“It all collapsed. Like every part of me collapsed and my heart was broken, and I just didn’t know how to pick up the pieces,” she says.

What followed was intensive therapy — five days a week, eight hours a day. She didn’t go willingly.

“I was very resistant. I did not want to be there,” she says. But her three daughters became her reason. “I had no choice but to heal myself enough that I could go and be the mom that they deserved. And that was that was my reason. That was my why.”

The paradox was clear in hindsight: in order to truly choose her daughters, she had to choose herself first.

From ’emotional’ to ’emotion-full’

One of the most quietly radical reframings in Garth’s story is what she did with the word “emotional” — a label that has been used to dismiss women for generations.

“I started to become ashamed of it and think, ‘Oh, there’s something wrong with me. I’m a mess,'” she recalls. After years of bottling it up, she landed somewhere different.

“I’m not emotional like it’s a bad thing. I’m emotion-full, which is actually my superpower in life.”

For women who have spent decades being told they’re “too much,” that simple swap — emotional to emotion-full — can feel like coming home.

The unexpected teachers

Garth credits a surprising mix of guides for getting her here. Her co-star Cameron Mathison, while filming a Christmas movie, introduced her to Kadampa Buddhism, which she now studies and journals about. Her mother, who led female empowerment seminars in her 30s and stocked the family’s Illinois farmhouse with self-help books, planted seeds Garth didn’t realize had taken root. And her daughters, she says, teach her something every single day.

She tells a story about her daughter, Luca, giving her a small red coffee table book one Christmas. Its title: “Shit Happens. Get Over It. Love.” Garth laughs about it now, but it landed.

“She was saying, ‘It’s time to move forward, mom.'”

Even Taylor Swift makes an appearance. The lyric “You’re on your own, kid, you always have been” rattled Garth at first.

“At first it was a little bit scary… and then I started to think, it’s so true. We are all on our own. And guess what? We always have been.”

What sounded like abandonment, she says, eventually felt like a hug. “It’s empowering. You have control over yourself. It’s the only thing you have control over.”

Life begins at 50

Through her work with QVC’s Q50 platform and her clothing line, The Age of Possibility, Garth has become a quiet evangelist for women over 50.

“Now is our time to shine,” she says. “We’ve done the work. We’ve raised the kids. We’ve, you know, served our husbands or whatever our experience has been. Others, others, others. Now is the time that it’s okay. It feels necessary for us to give back to ourselves.”

Aging, she writes, isn’t being. It’s becoming.

“We can always choose ourselves,” Garth says. “And it’s not selfish — we need to do it.”

For every woman sitting in a quieter house, a quieter season, a quieter version of the life she once knew, that may be the only permission slip she needs.

What Matters With Liz airs every Wednesday on YouTube, Spotify, Amazon Music and Apple Podcasts, with highlights and behind-the-scenes clips shared on Instagram and Facebook.

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This story was originally published May 1, 2026 at 4:00 PM.