While it might be hard to believe given that she's been living an extraordinary life for decades, Mariah Carey reportedly had a rough childhood. Per Entertainment Tonight, while speaking on "CBS This Morning" in September 2020, Carey revealed that she had to heal from a lot of things that happened in her past, including her mother's alleged jealousy of her career.

Carey was on the show to promote her memoir, "The Meaning of Mariah Carey," in which she details a lot of the dysfunction she grew up with. She explained that her mother, an aspiring singer and former Julliard student, once told her that "she should only hope" to be "half the singer" she was. Carey added that she wasn't sure her mother would even recall making the statement, but it's stayed with her ever since.

As shared by Variety, Carey also related a darker story in her book, writing that her sister, who is eight years older than her, introduced her to both drugs and older men when Carey was 12 years old. Despite that, Carey manages to find empathy for the big sister she no longer speaks to, adding, "The promise of her life was squandered in a tragic series of cheap bargains rather than being redeemed through the difficult, lifelong work of recovery and rebuilding oneself."