Ina Garten opens up about childhood abuse, thought her father would 'kill' her

Ina Garten is opening up about the physical and emotional abuse she suffered as a child.

The Food Network star, whose new memoir "Be Ready When Luck Happens," is out Oct. 1, told People that she was "terrified" of her late father, Charles Rosenberg, a surgeon, who would hit her and pull her hair.

"I was physically afraid of my dad," said Garten, 76. "I literally remember thinking he would kill me if I did something. I was physically afraid of him. And my mother just was unsupportive."

Garten, who said her brother was also a victim of the abuse, described how she would stay in her bedroom in the family's Connecticut home to avoid her father's wrath.

“If there’s a threat of violence, you’re always afraid, even when it’s not happening. So I basically spent my entire childhood in my bedroom with a door closed,” she said. “I think it was just protection. It was just to keep myself safe.”

Garten also spoke about her father's abuse for story in The New Yorker published Sept. 2.

"He would just have a rage, where he would drag me around the house by my hair," she recalled. "He never sexually abused me, but he had this love-hate relationship with me."

Garten and her mother were never close, she told People, because her mother "really didn’t know how to have a relationship."

She credits falling in love with her future husband Jeffrey Garten as a teenager with showing her what a healthy relationship could feel like.

“Everything changed when I met Jeffrey,” she said.

Though her mother warned her she was too young to be a bride, Ina Garten married her husband in December 1968 when she was 20.

"But it was the first time in my life when I just said to her, ‘I know you don’t think this is a good idea. And for the first time, I’m really sorry to tell you this, but I don’t care. I’m doing this.’”

Later in life, the celebrity cookbook author forgave her father after he apologized "in his own way" for abusing her, she said. But her mother "never acknowledged" the violence in the family's home.

Garten says it took "sheer determination" on her part to overcome her difficult childhood.

"I just wasn’t about to spend my life like that," she said. "And I think, a lot of times, people make a decision to live their lives differently and they end up sliding back into what they feel is familiar and I was determined not to do that."

This article was originally published on TODAY.com