Rolling Stone<\/em> she\u2019d been checked into mental-health treatment facilities four times. She described her anxiety about sharing her story but said it was the right thing to do. \u201cBecause I have the platform I have,\u201d she said, \u201cit\u2019s kind of like I\u2019m sacrificing myself a little bit for a greater purpose.\u201d<\/p>\nSomething to the opposite effect seems to have played out at Wondermind. Out of 29 former and current employees, 14 agreed to speak with me, most on the condition of anonymity. According to dozens of conversations, the company\u2019s grand mission and basic operations were tanked by Gomez\u2019s and Teefey\u2019s personal and family dysfunction, including the denial of Teefey\u2019s instability<\/p>\n
In March, Wondermind failed to pay employees on time. In May, after paychecks failed to go out on schedule once again, and the debacle leaked to the press, staffers were furious but not surprised<\/p>\n
\u201cI will say this with the utmost certainty \u2014 no doubt, hesitation in my mind,\u201d one says. \u201cSelena knew her mother was not well enough to be running that company.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gomez has many times described her childhood with Teefey as \u201cvery Gilmore Girls,<\/em>\u201d referring to the wholesome, quippy relationship at the center of the early-aughts TV show about a young mother and her teen daughter. And like Lorelai Gilmore, Teefey gave birth at 16, when she was still in high school. But Gomez\u2019s upbringing seems to have been far less sunny, and by Teefey\u2019s own telling, Gomez was burdened with her mother\u2019s troubles from a young age.<\/p>\nIn a conversation in August, Teefey told me she grew up in Grand Prairie, Texas. She was adopted at birth by a working-class family and raised in a neighborhood rife with gang violence and other crime. Her mental-health struggles began when she was very young. Her family was stable and kind, she said, but she had a persistent feeling of \u201cdisconnection.\u201d \u201cI always felt like I was alone,\u201d she told me. \u201cIt was almost like I was watching a movie.\u201d When she was 7, she tried to commit suicide.<\/p>\n
She was bullied in high school for looking like an outsider \u2014 dyeing her hair purple and wearing combat boots \u201cbefore Claire Danes,\u201d she said \u2014 and, later, for being a teen mom<\/p>\n
During her pregnancy with Gomez, Teefey began having mood swings, which escalated into what were later diagnosed as manic episodes. Her understanding at the time was simply that she was \u201ccrazy,\u201d and she often felt doomed. She began drinking \u2014 \u201cself-medicating,\u201d as she sees it now \u2014 when Gomez was a young child<\/p>\n
When Gomez was 5, Teefey was deciding whether to leave Gomez\u2019s father. The people around her, she said, were telling her that ending the relationship would ruin her daughter\u2019s life, but she knew it couldn\u2019t work. Teefey told me a story of breaking down in tears one day as she was putting on her makeup. Gomez began comforting her, she said: \u201cShe just started, like, playing with my hair.\u201d Teefey recalled looking into the mirror and telling her daughter, \u201cI don\u2019t know what I\u2019m supposed to do.\u201d Gomez replied, she said, \u201cYou\u2019ll figure it out, Mommy. You\u2019re beautiful.\u201d Teefey and Gomez\u2019s father split up in 1997. Elsewhere, Teefey has described the same period, saying her daughter would \u201cvent and yell\u201d at her for breaking the family apart.<\/p>\n
Teefey started going to therapy in her early 20s and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. A variety of initial medications were ineffective, but she eventually found relief, she said, in an anti-seizure medicine<\/p>\n
Teefey wanted to be an actress, and after high school she attended a conservatory. She began performing in community theater while working as a receptionist, bringing Gomez along to rehearsals, and soon her daughter wanted to be an actress too. In 2000, when Gomez was 7, she auditioned for Barney & Friends<\/em>and was selected out of 1,400 kids to be one of the children program\u2019s handful of singing and dancing stars. Barney<\/em> shot in the Dallas area; Teefey began working as a TV extra, including on Walker, Texas Ranger,<\/em>and soon started pursuing a production career through her contacts on the show.<\/p>\nAfter Gomez aged out of her role on Barney, she began auditioning for parts in the Disney universe. She shot a couple pilots that weren\u2019t picked up and then, in 2006, she landed the lead on Wizards of Waverly Place as a teenager with magical powers<\/p>\n
With Waverly<\/em>came real money and fame. Gomez, Teefey, and Teefey\u2019s new husband, Brian Teefey, moved to L.A., and Gomez\u2019s mother and stepfather became her managers. Gomez has described her mom as \u201cfantastic\u201d in the role during those early years. She wasn\u2019t allowed to go to industry after-parties, and she has said Teefey \u201cwould never, ever put me in a room by myself. She was just very aware of things that I didn\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\nTeefey still had ambitions of her own. Shortly after arriving in town, she\u2019d come across a young-adult novel about suicide, 13 Reasons Why,at a Barnes & Noble in Hollywood, and in 2011, after establishing a production company, she bought the rights to the story and made a deal to produce it as a film for Universal Pictures with Gomez in the lead<\/p>\n
Gomez, meanwhile, was reaching a new stratosphere of fame. Since 2009, she\u2019d been putting out albums with the band Selena Gomez & the Scene, each one cracking the top ten on the Billboard<\/em> charts. By 2011, she\u2019d started dating Justin Bieber, then the biggest teen star in the world, and the pair\u2019s on-again, off-again relationship was manna for the tabloids. In 2013, Gomez was diagnosed with lupus, which the singer has said causes her joint pain, depression, and anxiety. The next year, she checked herself into a luxury treatment facility for two weeks. At the time, TMZ reported that she was detoxing from narcotics and alcohol. Gomez later said she was recovering from chemotherapy related to lupus. In the years since, she\u2019s said she began experiencing manic episodes and suicidal thoughts around that time.<\/p>\nIn the tabloids, Teefey was rumored to blame the relationship with Bieber for her daughter\u2019s distress: Bieber had recently been arrested for drunk driving and accused of vandalism. (He later pleaded guilty to lesser charges of careless driving and resisting arrest.)<\/p>\n
During roughly the same period, Teefey herself was experiencing severe depression, which she attributes, in part, to a miscarriage in 2011 at the age of 35. She\u2019s described feeling at the time as if she\u2019d failed both her unborn baby and Gomez. She wondered, she\u2019s said, if she should have kept her daughter from show business and given her a normal childhood<\/p>\n
In 2014, Gomez fired her mother and stepfather. In the past, including in My Mind & Me,<\/em> Teefey has said she learned the news from TMZ. After TMZ\u2019s report, she told the publication she was \u201chaving a hard time processing\u201d Gomez\u2019s choice. Teefey told me, however, that the decision was made over a series of conversations with her daughter and that she was more worried about Gomez than anything else: \u201cIt was from more of an Oh shit, she doesn\u2019t know I protected her from so much.<\/em>\u201d At the time, news outlets reported that the mother and daughter had stopped speaking.<\/p>\nBoth women continued to struggle with their health. In 2017, Gomez had a kidney transplant related to lupus, and over the next few years, she experienced a series of manic episodes and entered inpatient mental-health treatment. The same year, Teefey said, she began having grand-mal seizures and received a new mental-health diagnosis. Her doctors believed she was not bipolar but had ADHD and PTSD. (Teefey has now been prescribed Ritalin and no longer takes medication for bipolar disorder.)<\/p>\n
Though she and Gomez were estranged, Teefey continued to talk about her daughter in public \u2014 both to the tabloids and on social media. (A representative for Teefey claimed that she did not speak to the tabloids.) When Gomez got back together with Bieber after briefly dating Abel Tesfaye, the musician known as the Weeknd, Teefey told a website called Gossip Cop that she was \u201cnot happy\u201d about the decision. After Gomez shot a movie with Woody Allen, A Rainy Day in New York,<\/em>Teefey claimed in an Instagram post that she\u2019d tried to dissuade her daughter from taking part in the film but her advice had fallen \u201con deaf ears.\u201d That December, Teefey and Gomez unfollowed each other on the platform. Teefey confirmed that Gomez did not speak to her for some time, saying her daughter believed she was too \u201ccontrolling.\u201d<\/p>\nWhen Gomez landed in a mental-health facility againTeefey once more learned the news from TMZ. \u201cShe didn\u2019t want anything to do with me,\u201d Teefey says in the doc. \u201cI was scared she was going to die.\u201d<\/p>\n
When we spoke,Teefey described herself as hesitant to discuss her relationship with her daughter but said they had reunited in 2019, when Gomez was \u201cready.\u201d The next year, mother and daughter sat for an interview with Daniella Pierson for her girlboss newsletter, The Newsette,<\/em> which she\u2019d grown into a multimillion-dollar company since starting it five years earlier when she was in college. In the interview, Pierson opened up about her own obsessive-compulsive disorder. Gomez and Teefey spoke for the first time about how their respective mental-health issues had affected their relationship, or, rather, as they presented it, how their relationship \u2014 communicative and honest \u2014 had helped them manage their conditions.<\/p>\nThe three women launched Wondermind in April 2022 and raised $5 million in series-A funding. The initial plans for the business were ambitious. The founders wanted to create a \u201cmental-health ecosystem,\u201d providing \u201ctools\u201d that, in Teefey\u2019s telling at the time, would match those she was offered at an inpatient \u201cfacility that cost $1,500 a day.\u201d Teefey and Pierson would be co-CEOs. Pierson, who would later be accused of repeatedly inflating the revenue, investment, and subscriber numbers for The Newsette<\/em> and for her VC firm, Chasm (established in 2025), had significant and seemingly sound business experience, particularly in media. (Pierson has called the accusations against her \u201cdefamatory lies.\u201d) She would head up the New York office, which would be focused on producing mental-health-related content for the company\u2019s newsletter and website, intended to be, in Pierson\u2019s words, \u201ca sexier, more entertaining\u201d alternative to publications like Psychology Today.<\/em> Teefey, who at that point had worked on and off as a small-scale film and TV producer for 20 years, would be in charge of the L.A. office, developing the podcasts, movies, and shows. The goal was something akin to Reese Witherspoon\u2019s Hello Sunshine media operation. (\u201cMandy always compared her intentions to Reese\u2019s,\u201d one staffer says.)<\/p>\nGomez would be Wondermind\u2019s chief impact officer, an expectedly indeterminate title for a busy celebrity partner. In the company\u2019s early days, employees saw her involvement as providing a degree of built-in security. Her reach was massive \u2014 she was, and still is, the single-most-followed woman on Instagram \u2014 and her pockets were unusually deep, even for an A-list star: She\u2019s estimated to be worth somewhere between $700 million and more than $1 billion, much of that money made through her makeup business, Rare Beauty, which she started in 2020, now valued at $2 billion. It seemed unlikely Gomez would allow a company with her name on it to falter.<\/p>\n
In a conversation with ABC News in Wondermind\u2019s first month, Teefey, Gomez, and Pierson presented an image of a happy, part-chosen family: They were vulnerable but healed women on a mission to share the wisdom they\u2019d found. Gomez said she was the most content she\u2019d ever been. \u201cIf I am going to be known for anything,\u201d she told the reporter, \u201cI hope it\u2019s simply for the way I care about people.\u201d Teefey got choked up while describing learning to better take care of her daughter during Gomez\u2019s mental-health struggles: \u201cWe had to learn how to recommunicate with each other. And it\u2019s been amazing ever since we took the time.\u201d Gomez and Pierson, who sat on either side of her, each briefly and stiffly placed a hand on her shoulder.<\/p>\n
According to employees, the relationship between Teefey and Pierson was openly tense, even hostile, from the company\u2019s first days. \u201cMandy and Dani didn\u2019t trust each other,\u201d says one staffer. Conversations were so contentious that Teefey\u2019s assistant, another says, would turn on a white-noise machine to dampen Teefey\u2019s raised voice. (In a comment, a representative for Teefey called this a \u201cgross distortion.\u201d) Many of the company\u2019s staffers \u2014 a half-dozen in each office \u2014 felt pitted against one another, New York versus L.A.<\/p>\n
Pierson assessed Teefey, in the words of a staffer, as \u201cunable to deliver anything\u201d she\u2019d promised, and some employees were starting to suspect the same. It was in the business\u2019s first few months that they began to notice that Teefey was sleeping in her office and spending much of the workday on the couch. She planned to host a podcast, supposedly a top priority, but the project was perpetually in limbo.<\/p>\n
If Teefey had ever seen Pierson as an asset, she\u2019d quickly changed her mind: Staff say she viewed Pierson as an opportunist hitching herself to Gomez\u2019s fame. Many of the staff, for their part, found Pierson egomaniacal and overly forceful, making unilateral decisions whenever given the opportunity. One calls her a \u201cchaos monster.\u201d Another describes her as a \u201cbullet train,\u201d while Teefey, they say, \u201cwould stick her foot in the quicksand and just sink.\u201d<\/p>\n
Just shy of a year after launch, Wondermind staffers were told Pierson was no longer with the company. Accounts of precisely what happened vary, but ontrol and Teefey had come out on top<\/p>\n
The staff were not terribly concerned by Pierson\u2019s sudden departure; some were even relieved. Wondermind\u2019s finances seemed to be sturdy. The company had been valued at $100 million and had made Inc.<\/em>\u2019s annual list of the fastest-growing private companies. Revenue was coming in from advertising on the newsletter and website, and though the podcast, film, and TV production arm hadn\u2019t yet had any concrete success, Wondermind was hiring more employees. Teefey frequently referred to the company\u2019s series-B funding, which she said would be arriving imminently. \u201cMandy was able to keep the fa\u00e7ade up that she was just getting her hands around things,\u201d one staffer says. \u201cMost people pretty much bought into that.\u201d<\/p>\nStaff grew concerned, however, when it became clear that Teefey would not be replacing Pierson with another co-CEO. Teefey didn\u2019t seem to have the experience to run the business on her own \u2014 her production company was a two-person operation with credits on only three projects \u2014 and employees had seen the way her energy often waned. \u201cShe\u2019s a creative and has big ideas,\u201d one staffer says. \u201cIf she had had the wherewithal to be like, \u2018Hey, let\u2019s hire a CEO, and why don\u2019t I take an advisory role?,\u2019 that would have been great.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shortly after Pierson\u2019s departure, staffers say, Teefey became less reliable. Almost every employee I spoke with told me she frequently missed Zoom calls and repeatedly canceled meetings, in some cases delaying conversations for a few months or even as long as a year. She came into work less and less and was often unreachable. \u201cMandy would disappear for weeks,\u201d one says. \u201cShe wouldn\u2019t respond at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Projects continued to be delayed. Behind the Racquet,<\/em> a tennis docuseries Wondermind had signed on to produce with Venus Williams, was endlessly stalled. One staffer tells me they\u2019d needed Teefey to give notes on a script the company was considering for development at the beginning of 2023 and it took Teefey until 2024 to get it done. (In our interview, Teefey said, \u201cI do cancel meetings a lot, given it being a busy start-up lifestyle.\u201d She told me she was at times absent owing to long-term COVID but denied she\u2019d ever been gone for weeks at a time.)<\/p>\nStaff say that when Teefey was present, she seemed desperate to assert control, lashing out if she found out that projects moved forward in her absence. Several say she sent unexpected angry emails and texts and lost her temper frequently. One recounts being called in to Teefey\u2019s office after a vacation and getting berated for not responding to work messages while away. According to the staffer, Teefey jabbed a finger in their face and yelled that when she sent an email, they needed to \u201cfucking answer.\u201d (When we spoke, Teefey said she could not \u201cdiscuss that particular employee.\u201d)<\/p>\n
![\"Wondermind,](\"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/4cd9154aeb1c64a42ab029ba5f7a7d590f-wondermind-2.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
\nWondermind co-founders Teefey, Gomez, and Daniella Pierson posing for Entrepreneur magazine in 2021.
\n Photo: Cara Robbins\/Contour RA by Getty Images<\/p>\n
In the summer of 2023, Teefey began to let it be known, bluntly and offhandedly, that Wondermind\u2019s financial situation was untenable. According to one staffer, Teefey said she and Gomez had contributed $8 million of their own money and that she was struggling to secure series-B funding. \u201cI\u2019m carrying the entire company,\u201d the employee remembers her saying angrily. \u201cIf the company went down, me and Selena will be fine. But none of you will be fine. I\u2019m doing this to make sure you all have fucking jobs.\u201d According to several staffers, Teefey said Gomez had stepped in multiple times to cover employee payroll.<\/p>\n
At the same time, Teefey seemed to continue pursuing new projects. She was working on a Wondermind app with an external developer: It would serve as a hub for the start-up\u2019s web content and offer a variety of interactive \u201cmental fitness\u201d tools. Whatever work was being done to build it, however, was a black box<\/p>\n
Teefey visited New York in late March. At the Malin, an upscale members-only office space in Soho, Teefey\u2019s chief of staff, Emma Wright, presented screenshots of the long-promised app\u2019s interface. According to several staffers, Teefey seemed tired or sick, though she spoke up to propose a light installation in Central Park to celebrate Mental Health Awareness Month, upcoming in May<\/p>\n
It was three days later, in a March 31 email, that Teefey told employees they would not be paid on time. They would also be losing their health, dental, and vision insurance. When we spoke, Teefey described the day as \u201cprobably one of the worst days of my life.\u201d She said a deal had fallen through and emphasized, as she did at other points in our conversation, that start-ups are difficult \u2014 nothing is guaranteed.<\/p>\n
The next day, on an all-staff call, according to employees, Teefey seemed not to accept responsibility. She described the incident as a \u201clittle hiccup\u201d and said she would have covered payroll herself had her business manager not prevented her. She was confident the series-B funding would be arriving soon; the singer Michael Bubl\u00e9 would be an investor<\/p>\n
Staff payment was resolved a few days later. A week after that, Teefey posted a message to Slack announcing a collection of projects that sounded both far-fetched and distinctly detached from the company\u2019s financial reality. She claimed Wondermind was teaming up with actress Jessica Chastain and the producers of Silver Linings Playbook<\/em> to make a movie \u2014 the script, she said, was already written. Wondermind was also, she said, in negotiations with an unspecified party to develop a snack food. (An employee group chat lit up with jokes: \u201cLorazepancakes\u201d; \u201cFruit snacks with just a liiittle bit of xanax?\u201d) One staffer says Teefey told her she\u2019d been inspired by Kourtney Kardashian<\/a> and Travis Barker, who were \u201cmaking a vegan egg.\u201d Staff say she\u2019d floated the possibility of a Cheetos-like snack topped with a supplement, such as ashwagandha powder.<\/p>\nAt the end of April, Wondermind paychecks failed to go out once again. At a meeting the following week, according to an audio recording of the conversation,<\/em> Teefey said staff would receive their checks soon and that she\u2019d taken out a loan on her home. (Teefey\u2019s representative later said she was being hyperbolic.) Employees wondered why, if things were so desperate, Gomez hadn\u2019t stepped in to bail out the company \u2014 and her mother.<\/p>\nIn the early days of Wondermind, staffers noticed that Teefey often emphasized the business\u2019s independence from Gomez, drawing what seemed to be an unnecessarily hard line. \u201cThis site is not Selena\u2019s site,\u201d she stressed, employees say, when the editorial team was designing the newsletter and website. \u201cWe don\u2019t want this to be like, \u2018This is Selena\u2019s brand.\u2019\u201d From a business standpoint, this seemed counterintuitive \u2014 Gomez was a power influencer if ever there was one, and her other company, Rare Beauty, was an enormous success. To employees, Teefey\u2019s impulse was obviously personal. She resented her public image as \u201cSelena\u2019s mom\u201d \u2014 especially now that she was no longer her daughter\u2019s manager. \u201cThat\u2019s not enough for her,\u201d one staffer said.<\/p>\n
Teefey has complained to the press at times that her daughter\u2019s celebrity made it difficult to build her own reputation as a producer, and when we spoke, she said the \u201cmomager\u201d title still follows her. \u201cI call it \u2018nepo parent\u2019 instead,\u201d she said. She recounted a story of pitching a new Wondermind platform to an investor alongside a male colleague. At the end of the meeting, she claimed, the investor credited her colleague with the presentation. \u201cAnd he looks at me,\u201d she said, \u201cand goes, \u2018Oh, and you, you gave birth.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Teefey said that she\u2019d used Gomez\u2019s influence sparingly \u201cvery intentionally\u201d \u2014 that the company had not yet arrived at a stable enough place for her daughter\u2019s sway to be \u201cutilized at its best capacity.\u201d To multiple former employees, it seemed Teefey had refused to grab hold of ready lifelines: They say she repeatedly rejected deals with companies and investors drawn to Wondermind through their interest in Gomez, that she\u2019d found this interest offensive and taken it as a personal slight. According to one staffer, Wondermind pulled out of a potential project with Mattel because the company wanted Gomez to be included as a producer. (Teefey said she has not rejected any such deals.)<\/p>\n
On the rare occasions staffers saw Teefey and Gomez interact, according to some, their relationship appeared strained and uncomfortable. \u201cI can tell there\u2019s distance between the two of them, a lot of hurt,\u201d one says. \u201cThey don\u2019t interact like a typical mother and daughter. They interact like two women who put up with each other, not even two co-workers. The air was, like, cold between them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Staffers describe Gomez as disinterested, at best, in the company. Many believe Wondermind is effectively, as one puts it, \u201ca way for Selena to keep Mandy out of her orbit.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Gomez\u2019s few visits to the L.A. office, staffers say, she spent most of her time speaking to her mother behind closed doors. She rarely mentioned Wondermind in public appearances, and her social-media posts promoting the company, according to employees, were the result of the team pushing on her hard. \u201cIt was like pulling teeth,\u201d one says. \u201cWe\u2019d have to call her publicist four times.\u201d (In contrast, Gomez frequently publicized Rare Beauty\u2019s own mental-health initiatives, including fundraising for youth-mental-health services.)<\/p>\n
In June of the company\u2019s first year, Wondermind held a team dinner at Tower Bar in the Sunset Tower Hotel in West Hollywood. To staffers present, it seemed obvious that Gomez didn\u2019t take Wondermind seriously. Several employees say she arrived noticeably drunk, slurring her words and telling the table, over a martini, that she\u2019d be leaving shortly to go have sex. (A spokesperson for Gomez did not offer comment.)<\/p>\n
Some staff couldn\u2019t believe that Gomez would not step in to help her mother when, by outward appearances, Teefey was struggling to function. It\u2019s just not what they would have done, they imagined, if their mothers were in that state. Several say that Gomez had, on multiple occasions, arrived at the office on days after Teefey had slept in the suite. One employee recalls Gomez finding her mother lying on a couch, covered in blankets, her hair mussed, wearing slippers and a sweat suit that she\u2019d had on for several days in a row. \u201cHow long have you been here?\u201d the staffer recalls Gomez asking, sounding concerned. \u201cHave you gone home?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I had seen my mom in that state,\u201d one employee says, \u201cI would have intervened. I would say, \u2018This isn\u2019t right.\u2019\u201d Teefey is \u201cculpable,\u201d the staffer says \u2014 responsible for Wondermind\u2019s failures and their fallout \u2014 \u201cbut Selena, in my opinion, is just as culpable.\u201d<\/p>\n
The vast majority of staff members who spoke with me say they believe Gomez knew her mother did not have the capacity to run the company and shares blame for the resulting effects on their lives. Some have developed new or worsened panic disorders and depression that they attribute to both Teefey\u2019s behavior and the business\u2019s instability<\/p>\n
One member of the L.A. team, however, says they have real empathy for Gomez. During one particularly harsh rebuke from Teefey, the staffer says, \u201cI was like, Wow, if she\u2019s talking to me like this, what does she say to her own daughter?<\/em>\u200a<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\nOn May 10, Forbes<\/em> published a report on the funding crisis at Wondermind. Two days later, nine of the 15 people then employed at the company were laid off in meetings with Trivedi, the COO. Trivedi told at least one staffer that he\u2019d been pushing Teefey to downsize for \u201cthe last couple years.\u201d<\/p>\nBut for all this, Teefey, when we spoke in August, was optimistic. She told me that Wondermind\u2019s app was \u201cready to go.\u201d She described it as a community-building platform with \u201cmental fitness\u201d tools, all \u201cmedically advised and guided.\u201d One of the tools she loved, she said, was After Hours, a \u201cspecial room\u201d in the digital world where users could spend time during the hours of midnight to 4 a.m. \u2014 when people have, she claimed, \u201cthe highest level of suicide ideation.\u201d Inside the room was \u201ctherapeutic entertainment, games or whatever, so people don\u2019t feel alone.\u201d These activities, she said, would all be \u201cguided and led\u201d by therapists, but therapy would not be offered. In another feature, an interactive journal, the app would tell users when they seemed to be leaning into \u201cnegative self-talk.\u201d<\/p>\n
When I asked Teefey when it would be launched, she said the app was \u201cready to rock and roll\u201d but the company was still in the process of raising its series-B funding. She was hoping for \u201cpre-September.\u201d She added that there would be some sort of edible product to go with the app \u2014 one she couldn\u2019t \u201cget too deep into\u201d \u2014 that would involve \u201csomatic experiencing.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s not a supplement,\u201d she said, \u201cbut like a sublingual.\u201d It would dissolve and \u201cfizzle, like an Alka-Seltzer.\u201d<\/p>\n
When I asked Teefey about the staff accounts of her behavior, she said she had slept in the suite occasionally (\u201cwhen I was doing everything on my own\u201d) because she\u2019s not supposed to drive at night due to her seizures. (Her PR rep later commented that sleeping at the office showed she was working hard.) Teefey did have the TV on during business hours, she said: \u201cI always have something playing in the background. It\u2019s part of my ADHD \u2014 that helps me focus.\u201d There was no mess of takeout food or delivery boxes, she said, and no gathering flies. Her younger daughter had spent the night at the office only once, she claimed.<\/p>\n
As for the Benadryl injections from the nurse missing teeth, Teefey said she would use whatever nurse was sent and did not go into the specifics of the medication. Her reply to the allegation of snorting Ritalin in the office was more direct: \u201cAbsolutely not.\u201d<\/p>\n
Recalling that night in September when she\u2019d texted staff and called the police, she rejected the suggestion that she\u2019d hallucinated an intruder. She said the office was in a \u201cvery sketchy neighborhood \u2026 We had a huge homeless community that would roam in and out of our building.\u201d<\/p>\n
Following our interview, one of Wondermind\u2019s four remaining employees, Jonathon Glucksman, sent me a video he said corroborated Teefey\u2019s account of the night. But New York<\/em> found no footage of a man speaking to the Ring cam, and we saw no evidence that anyone had attempted to break in, in line with the police\u2019s findings. (Teefey\u2019s rep insisted that the supposed intruder could be heard on tape.) Among staffers, only Glucksman, Wright (Teefey\u2019s chief of staff), and one other current employee spoke on the record in support of Teefey<\/p>\nSeveral Wondermind staff members say they feel some compassion for Teefey. One tells me they do not believe she ever tried to deceive them. \u201cShe did lead us on,\u201d they say, \u201cbut it wasn\u2019t malicious.\u201d \u201cThere will always be people who are dangerously unstable,\u201d another says. \u201cWhat\u2019s worse is somebody like Selena who sees it firsthand and doesn\u2019t do anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
Teefey gave an additional statement after we spoke: \u201cI started Wondermind because I wanted to help people with mental illness. It\u2019s unfortunate that a few disgruntled employees with an ax to grind can spread lies about me and distort the truth. Even more disappointing that the media is willing to amplify their lies.\u201d<\/p>\n
She would tell me very little about her current relationship with Gomez. She said the two had developed healthy boundaries and that their dynamic is supportive. She was much more forthcoming about Selena\u2019s younger years. \u201cWe had a very close relationship. But I was living with a little bit of fear and uncertainty,\u201d she said, \u201cand also not knowing where my mental health was. It was always just, like, everything was happening \u2014 life was happening \u2014 while I was trying to plan for life to happen.\u201d Everything would have been different, she told me, without Selena: \u201cI would have gone down a completely rougher path and might not even be here today. She saved my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
See All<\/p>\n
Tags:<\/h3>\n
What Happened at Wondermind?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gomez and Teefey at SXSW in Austin last year. Photo: Suzanne Cordeiro\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5473,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[956,259,957],"class_list":["post-5469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-happened","tag-what","tag-wondermind"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5469"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5472,"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5469\/revisions\/5472"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lumeamara.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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