Mama June Shannon is ready for a new beginning.
The reality star, 45, tells PEOPLE in an exclusive interview amid the one-year anniversary of her daughter Anna “Chickadee” Cardwell’s death that she wants to move out of her current home because it causes emotional turmoil for the whole family.
Anna died on Dec. 9, 2023 at age 29 following her diagnosis with stage 4 adrenal carcinoma.
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“I’m trying to move out of this home,” June tells PEOPLE, adding that the family is having a hard time “finding what we’re looking for.”
“I don’t want to be here anymore,” she continues. “It’s just a mental and emotional f— for everybody, if that makes sense, because we have to go to bed here; we have to wake up here; we live here.”
June notes of her kids, “Pumpkin and the other girls don’t want to come here because they were all here when Anna passed.”
Anna was survived by her mother, her sisters, Alana “Honey Boo Boo” Thompson, Lauryn “Pumpkin” Efird and Jessica “Chubbs” Shannon; her daughters, Kaitlyn and Kylee; and her husband, Eldridge Toney.
June recalled that after her stepfather died about 30 years ago, she felt hurt when her mother sold her childhood home, but now, she say, she understands why she did it.
“I was always mad at my mom because she gave away the childhood home,” she explains. “She moved very quickly. It was a week after my stepdad passed away. He didn’t even die in the house, he died at a hospice care center. And I was like, ‘Why would you want to do that? Why wouldn’t you want to be there?'”
June says, “Well, now I understand, even though I don’t talk to my mother, why she had done that. Because it’s just a constant reminder of everything, like the last days. The good memories are here, most certainly.”
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As for where June wants to relocate, she says she initially wanted to “move back to where I’m from, the Hampton Locust Grove area” in Georgia. Additionally, she notes that she wants them to move to a more metropolitan area with more amenities so the family can have more lifestyle choices.
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Last month, June penned an emotional Facebook post asking her followers for help finding a three– or four-bedroom house. She wrote, “It’s honestly been one of the roughest years of my entire life.”
In the post, she shared that the family wanted to move by Dec. 8, the day before the one-year anniversary of Anna’s death.
In another portion of her interview with PEOPLE, June talked about the myriad emotions she’s experienced while grieving her late daughter. “Some days are good and I can put on that face. Well, they’re not good, but I can act like it’s good,” she said.
“But then there’s just some days I can just sit here and I just wallow in it,” she continued. “I don’t want to do anything. I don’t want to go anywhere. I don’t want to be bothered. I went through that slump I think until a month or so ago where I didn’t go for four months to get my hair done. I didn’t go get my nails done. I still hadn’t got my lashes done. It’s like you just get in these funks and sometimes I’m just f—ing pissed off and mad because I’m like, ‘Why?’ ”
