Davina McCall is back on our screens tonight (June 24) for Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace.
However, while she brings all of the drama and emotion when it comes to reuniting other people’s families, Davina hasn’t been a stranger to heartache in her own.
In fact, the star previously admitted that her emotion came to the fore when her mother passed away.
Lost Family host Davina McCall on mum’s death
Davina, 56, revealed that she felt a “sense of relief” when her mother Florence Knock died in South Africa back in 2008.
The pair had a strained relationship after she abandoned the host as a child.
Speaking about the experience Davina told the Mail: “When she died I felt a sense of relief that I could stop swinging from side to side. And I also think, please God, when I die, don’t let it be a relief to anybody.”
While she didn’t attend her estranged mother’s funeral, she said she did forgive her.
She continued: “I imagined her in the hospital bed, and I imagined these shoots of light going from my palms, all over, across the world, to South Africa, to the hospital where she was at, and going straight into her heart.
“All I kept saying was: ‘I forgive you. I forgive you. I forgive you’.”
Davina’s abandonment
Davina’s parents divorced when she was just three years old and she was sent to live with her grandparents in Surrey.
While she stayed in regular contact with her father, her French-born mother returned to her native country, leaving little room for her daughter.
Her visits would end in misery as her mother dragged her around Parisian nightclubs.
She even left her alone once when she was 12 years old, leaving a stranger to help her find her way home.
Davina eventually moved back in with her father when she was 13, but things never got better with her mother.
Davina also admitted the lack of emotional relationship with her mum left her “catatonic with grief”.
She explained: “I couldn’t make her invite me into her bed for a hug when I’d had a nightmare. I felt she’d done something to betray me or hurt me.”
As a teenager Davina turned to drugs to console her emotions, experimenting with cocaine and heroin. She didn’t get clean until she was 25.
However, the mum of three eventually realised her mother was “damaged” and “did the best she could with what she had”.
Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace airs on June 24 from 9pm on ITV1 and ITVX.
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