“Nothing’s Going To Change Unless You Make It Change”

In the fall of 2013, Chiara de Blasio was a pretty ordinary teenage girl from Brooklyn. She'd just finished a summer vacation and was about to head back to college — when her dad, Bill de Blasio, won his primary election, and started looking like the inevitable next mayor of New York City. All of a sudden, the de Blasios were famous. The New York tabloids wrote stories about her choice of headband, and her little brother's afro became the city's favorite haircut. She was profiled in magazines and appeared in televised campaign ads. Gawker asked tipsters to reveal where she went to college (and succeeded). Throughout it all, Chiara came off as chipper, upbeat, and an enthusiastic champion of her dad's job. But, things may have been a little more complicated beneath the surface. In May of 2014, Chiara wrote an emotional essay in XoJane, revealing that she was in recovery, and had struggled with addiction and mental health issues. Now, two years later, we got Chiara and her mom, New York's first lady Chirlane McCray, to sit down and talk about growing up, getting healthy, and the ongoing fight to figure out how to be happy.