Riley Keough

Riley Keough was recently on Glennon Doyle's podcast to talk about the Presley family legacy, her mother Lisa Marie Presley’s posthumous memoir, and addiction, generational trauma and grief.

iHeart: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/274-we-can-do-hard-things-82211497/ || Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/291PkrsGwyxeZjhOBDVDdQ || Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-presley-family-legacy-with-riley-keough/id1564530722

• Riley's people contacted the podcast because she wanted to talk about things that weren't in the book (why they weren't in the book, who knows).

• Riley thinks Lisa Marie’s blunt honesty scared the shit out of grandma Priscilla and other people. To people who didn't know Lisa Marie and her personality, she was just this scary tiny lady. Lisa wasn't mean but she didn't hide her emotions or unhappiness and wasn't afraid to express herself. Riley isn't like that and finds that quality in her mother admirable.

• Riley's father Danny was also addicted to opioids like Lisa Marie.

• Riley feels an emotional connection to the Presley family members she's never met due to her mother and the generational trauma.

• Losing Elvis severely impacted Lisa Marie and she would say the only person she knew was Elvis until he died.

• While Lisa Marie didn't properly grieve, she found comfort in the Elvis fan community since they were also grieving Elvis.

• It wasn't until about 2021 that Lisa Marie started acknowledging her own trauma and identifying it as such. Riley thought that was great that her mother was willing to do so.

• While Riley could perceive her mother's grief, she didn't truly understand it until she lost her brother Benjamin to suicide in 2020.

• Riley has thought a lot about her mother Lisa Marie and grandmother Priscilla Presley’s complicated relationship since her mother's death. She admits she didn't think about their relationship when her mom was alive because the family was always fairly close. There was something Lisa wanted that she wasn't being given by Priscilla. Riley's relationship with Priscilla is far different than Priscilla's with Lisa, which Riley thinks is common.

• Priscilla cares a lot about appearance and everything being perfect, and Riley thinks a lot of that is due to the pressure Priscilla had with being fourteen and having to be perfect as Elvis' girlfriend. Priscilla felt intense pressure to be the most beautiful and perfect woman and wanting to keep her role as Elvis' partner. Riley takes that into consideration but she doesn't think Lisa Marie did. Riley can relate to the pressure to not wanting "the plates to fall," but she thinks Lisa Marie maybe didn't give Priscilla that grace.

• Riley describes her father Danny as very sensitive and soft and while he was/is wild and charismatic, he's also fragile. Lisa was also sensitive but had a strength to her. Riley thinks both she and her brother got Lisa's strength but Danny's sensitivity.

• Despite Lisa, Danny and Benjamin being wilder and party people/drinkers and Riley wasn't, Riley didn't feel left out and she would party with her parents in her 20s. However in her late 20s things started to get darker and as Lisa, Benjamin and Danny's addictions worsened, Riley became a "narc" to the family.

• Riley took on a lot of the stress of her family's addictions in trying to save them. "If I don't do everything in my power to drag you out of there...then I'm not gonna be able to live with myself so I have to." A lot of her life in her 20s was resisting what was happening and trying to fix things.

• Riley didn't understand the point of what was happening with her family. "Why am I in this life where everyone around me is just trying to take themselves out and there's nothing I can do, what is the lesson in that for me?"

• She feel she was forced to surrender to what was happening because her brother and mother died. By the time her mother died in January 2023, it felt liberating to surrender to the inevitable. She had been so resistant to her life and she got to a place that she felt freedom in letting her mother go and not fighting that reality.

• Riley says Lisa Marie and Danny didn't have good or nurturing homes growing up (Priscilla was neglectful/there was abuse by Priscilla's boyfriend, Riley has implied her paternal grandmother was also cold and neglectful and he left home at 16) but were both incredibly loving parents. She hopes she can give her daughter half the love her mother did with her.

• Riley had a hard time figuring out how to describe Lisa Marie and Benjamin on the page. She consulted her husband and father for help and found it hard to describe Benjamin. She says he was soft and sweet and thoughtful and that was his essence which he kept into adulthood. Benjamin was intellectual like Danny and funny, and everyone had a good experience with him. She had a hard time dealing with the shock of Benjamin's suicide.

• Lisa Marie's addictions reappeared at age 40 when she was given opioids after a c-section and she developed a dependency. She was a drinker but wouldn't have called herself an addict up until that point. Her addiction escalated to 80 pills a day and Riley got into a big fight with her mother when Lisa left rehab early.

• Lisa Marie got dental work in order to get the painkillers and everything spiraled (in addition to Lisa, Benjamin was also abusing alcohol and cocaine and her father had his own addiction issues). Lisa went out one night in Nashville and was offered coke​ and then she was regularly using cocaine, alcohol and opioids and eventually went into heart failure and was in the ICU.

• At the hospital, Lisa Marie was honest with the nurses and told them that she was an addict and needed help and the hospital called CPS. The twins- then six- were taken away from Lisa Marie.

• The courts gave the twins to Priscilla while Lisa went to rehab and when she was released, Riley had to become Lisa Marie’s court appointed monitor in order to have the twins. However, Lisa was still abusing the pills given to her in rehab to wean her off drugs and she didn't get sober until she had a seizure.

• When Benjamin died, Riley thought Lisa would relapse and OD but she didn't and Riley was proud of her. Lisa stayed sober for Benjamin's memory. Riley thinks Lisa felt Riley wasn't giving her enough praise for being sober and she would announce to Riley how many years sober she was. Riley actually was proud but she was also frightened and nervous her mother would relapse. She feels she should have told her mother she was proud of her.

• Lisa had to take oxy for a surgery in late 2022 and Riley was wary and apprehensive about it. She talked to the doctor and the doctor assured Riley Lisa needed to take them. When Lisa died, Riley's first thought was Lisa Marie accidentally overdosed. When the autopsy report came back with only therapeutic amounts of opioids, Riley was so proud and feels it's important to acknowledge that.

• Riley thinks it's heartbreaking that Lisa Marie died right when she was pulling out of her grief and was doing work on grief and trauma (when Lisa Marie died, she was talking about starting a grief podcast with her counselor and writing a book on grief, she was also hosting grief counseling sessions with Danny in their home for fellow parents who had children pass away), but she also wonders who's to say Lisa's impact was meant to be on this planet and maybe her impact is meant to be after her passing. She chooses to be hopeful about the reasons for why her mother's death happened.

• Riley says her mother's death "traumatized the shit out of [her]," but she chooses not to fear death.

• She thinks the book has been doing Lisa Marie’s desired work with grief and trauma since people have related and connected to it.

• Riley thinks a successful life is the ability to give and receive love and she jokes Lisa Marie was exceptional at *one* of those things.

• Riley thinks Lisa Marie was constantly searching for the meaning of her life, why she was there and her purpose. She thinks Lisa wanted love but was unable to receive love well. Riley thinks her mom had a hole she wanted to fill.

• Lisa had an abandonment issue and she was in pain and dealing with a lot of grief and that's why her addiction was easy to fall into- she just didn't want to be in pain.

• Riley's goal with her part of the book was wanting people to know the "beauty been" that was her mother and the podcast hosts say she succeeded.