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Aaron Rodgers’ Netflix Docuseries: Jets QB Reveals He Felt “Hurt” When Family Members Advised Him Not to Talk About His Life

Nidhi
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New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers (8) warms up before the game against the Arizona Cardinals at State Farm Stadium.

Aaron Rodgers’ estrangement from his family has been the stuff of media chatter for years now. While members of his family have given their side of the story through the years, we’ve never heard Rodgers himself tell his side of things. Until now.

This year has been a year of revelations from the QB, first from Ian O’Connor’s book ‘Out of the Darkness: The Mystery of Aaron Rodgers’ and his Netflix documentary series Enigma. In his documentary, the quarterback hinted that his relationship with his family deteriorated when he rose to fame.

“When I became real famous, family members said, ‘Your life is too big. We need you to be smaller. Be smaller, like, don’t talk about your life.’”

He admitted that he felt hurt by his family’s rejection of his fame, and made him feel like he wasn’t “seen”:

“It always hurt me because I just feel like, you don’t see me. And so as I found my voice to kind of question things, I also found doing things that, compared to what I grew up in, would be considered an alternative lifestyle.”

Ed and Darla, Rodgers’ parent, are devout Christians and presumably what he means by “what I grew up in” is surrounded by religion. And everyone is well aware of his “alternative lifestyle,” i.e. his love affair with Ayahuasca and “natural remedies.”

Rodgers has previously spoken publicly about religion which didn’t sit well with his family. In 2020, Aaron told then-girlfriend Danica Patrick on her “Pretty Intense” podcast,

“I don’t know how you can believe in a God who wants to condemn most of the planet to a fiery hell. What type of loving, sensitive, omnipresent, omnipotent being wants to condemn his beautiful creation to a fiery hell at the end of all this?”

His parents were reportedly “dismayed” by these comments.

Rodgers claims to have worked a lot on himself to have reached a point of self-love and self-acceptance. He is now in a new relationship and is enjoying that “good feeling” of being in love.

About the author

Nidhi

Nidhi

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Nidhi is an NFL Editor for The SportsRush. Her interest in NFL began with 'The Blindside' and has been working as an NFL journalist for the past year. As an athlete herself, she uses her personal experience to cover sports immaculately. She is a graduate of English Literature and when not doing deep dives into Mahomes' latest family drama, she inhales books on her kindle like nobody's business. She is proud that she recognised Travis Kelce's charm (like many other NFL fangirls) way before Taylor Swift did, and is waiting with bated breath for the new album to drop.

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