The reality TV veteran recently released a new book, One Day You'll Thank Me
When Cameran Eubanks Wimberly was cast in Southern Charm in 2013, she was already a reality TV show veteran having appeared on The Real World San Diego in 2004, and her role was to provide a voice of reason amid the drama. In her real life, the Anderson native got married the same year the show debuted and was pregnant during the filming of Season 5, managing to keep her family off-limits as much as possible. She succeeded in coming across as one of the more relatable and likable cast members, and mostly avoided getting embroiled in the scandals that beleaguered some of her castmates. Now, the part-time real estate agent has just released a new book, One Day You’ll Thank Me (Gallery Books, February 2021), which she started writing in the spring of 2019, a few months before she announced she wouldn’t return for Season 7. Here, she shares why she left the show and what she wants readers to take away from the book, in which she offers straight talk about relationships, pregnancy, and the life-changing role of being a mother.
CM: In the book, you say you decided not to return to Southern Charm because “drama on reality TV has taken a dark turn and become something I don’t want to associate myself with.” Can you expound on that?
CW: The older I get, the more I watch reality television, it leaves me with an icky feeling—the fighting, the rumors, the vitriol that you see, it’s just not good for the soul. I saw the show turning in that direction. It’s hard because there’s a lot of great things that come along with it. But I felt in my gut it was time for me to be done with it. I don’t regret doing it, but it was time to be done. I started to feel like a hypocrite because I was the Greek chorus of the show. It was my role to give my opinion on everybody else’s life, but I wanted to keep my private life, private, and you can’t be on a reality television show and keep your personal life private, so I felt like I needed to remove myself.
CM: What do you want readers to take away from your book?
CW: I think a lot of women have children, especially their first child, and they feel ashamed of how they feel afterward, whether it be they are overcome with anxiety; they might have some postpartum depression; they might feel completely overwhelmed and like a fish out of water. I want to normalize that. It’s a complete shock to your system, being a new mother. If somebody asks you, “How are you doing?” a couple of weeks after you had a baby, it’s totally acceptable to say, “I don’t know what I’m doing. I just want to cry.” It doesn’t make you weak. It doesn’t make you less of a mom. It’s hormones, and it’s real.
CM: You write about regaining your sense of self after becoming a mother. Tell us why that’s important to you.
CW: The first year of motherhood you lose yourself in a way, because you go from having independence to now you are literally responsible for another human’s life. A lot of women have children and their lives revolve around that child, and that’s great if that works for you. That would never work for me. I have to have alone time. I have to feel like I’m accomplishing something outside of being a mom. You have to have an identity, I think, outside of being a mom in order to be a good mom.
CM: What’s next for you?
CW: If this book does well, I would love to do a children’s book. As a mom, I think reading is so important. I’m always looking for children’s books that instill values and morals.
CM: What’s the biggest thing you learned about yourself from your time on Southern Charm?
CW: I tell people that reality television is like a mirror. It allows you to really truly see yourself, and yes, there’s editing and things can be edited to make you look a certain way sometimes, but I would say for the most part it's who you truly are. If you’re a jerk, it’s going to show you being a jerk, and if you’re kind, it’s going to show you being kind. I also learned this little bubble that I’m a part of temporarily is not how most people live everyday life, and you have to take it with a grain of salt. You have to compartmentalize it, and not lose yourself in it. I tried very hard to always be self aware of that—that this is a fleeting time in my life, and I tried not to take it too seriously.
CM: Did you have to adjust to not having television cameras following you around all the time?
CW: It’s interesting because I filmed The Real World on MTV when I was 19, and they actually offer you psychotherapy when you finish because you literally are followed 24-7 to the point where there are motion sensitive cameras mounted above your bed, so if you change position in your bed, you get woken up from the noise of the camera. Southern Charm was much different than that experience. We did not film every day. We had set hours each day that we were filmed, so it was a lot more easy to disconnect from the filming process.
CM: Did you watch the Season 7 of the show?
CW: We have Disney Plus and Netflix now. I've seen the clips on the internet when they play the preview. I’ve gotten an idea as to what happened. I tried to not watch it for my mental health. I thought it was best to take a clean break away from it, but Whitney sent me one of the episodes that I watched the whole way through, and it was a lot, very drama-filled.
CM: Do you feel like you’ve been able to get away from the drama of the show?
CW: I was obviously not happy that my name was brought into it again this season, but that’s part of the machine that is reality television, and so as upset as it made me, I tried to be real about it and say this is predictable, this is what I signed up for, so I can’t cry and complain about it. It’s part of being on reality television. Anything can be said about you. Anything can be made up about you, and it can be aired because you signed that contract.
CM: What’s the most important lesson that you’ve learned from motherhood so far?
CW: There’s something primal that happens when you become a mom where you have your own individual instinct, and that gut instinct will overweigh anything anybody tells you or anything you read. It’s so important that women know that they have that, and ultimately, if you just listen to it, you will be A OK. In the book, I say this was my experience, it doesn’t mean it’s going to be yours. Yours can be different, and that’s totally normal. There’s too many books and self-help guides out right now that tell women there’s a certain way to do things, and I think that’s BS.
CM: How has the pandemic affected your day-to-day life?
CW: In the beginning, I was extremely stressed out because my husband is a frontline worker. He’s [an anesthesiologist] so he’s in people’s airways literally every single day. Now that he is fully vaccinated, it’s like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders, because I don’t worry about him anymore, and I don’t worry about him bringing it home to me or Palmer. In South Carolina, there’s a lot of people who are pretending that this is not real and this is not really happening, but it absolutely is. I wish our state would wake up and wear masks and the whole nine yards, but it is what it is.
CM: What have you learned about motherhood since you finished writing the book?
CW: Palmer is now three months into being three. I enjoy the toddler stage more than the baby stage because you get feedback—they talk to you, they’ll hug you, and you’re not constantly guessing what they need. But, oh my gosh, threenagers, it’s a real thing. Everybody says they go from being a devil at three to an angel at four. Learning the proper way to discipline is a constant struggle. I follow every blog, instagram account, child psychologist, mommy bloggers who talk about how the heck should we discipline a toddler. But even though this age is hard, it’s also been my favorite.
Born: Anderson, South Carolina
Lives: With her husband, Jason, and three-year-old daughter, Palmer
Works: Part-time real estate agent for Carolina One Real Estate
