Tragic Details About JD Vance

This article includes mentions of domestic abuse and substance abuse. 

Before he became Donald Trump's 2024 running mate, JD Vance was a young man with a devastating story. From poverty to abuse, his early years were anything but happy — and sadly, he took a lot of that trauma into his adulthood. 

We'll start with the foundation of Vance's life. It's no secret that the "Hillbilly Elegy" author was born into a poor family with a history of treating their significant others like trash. His grandparents had a habit of getting violent with one another, and in one particularly terrifying instance, his grandmother even set her husband on fire for coming home drunk. Given that Vance's mother, Beverly Aikins, was exposed to such turmoil from an early age, it's sad but not unsurprising that she fell into similar patterns herself. "Hillbilly Elegy" saw Vance recount that Aikins had massive fights with her own romantic partners (more on that later) and that he was affected by them in a very big way. Aikins didn't only fight with her partners, though. She also took out her anger on her son.

Vance has both written and spoken about a car ride that took a turn for the worse, with Aikins declaring that she would crash the vehicle to kill both herself and her son. As he explained in a 2017 NBC News interview with Megyn Kelly, he managed to escape, and his mother was arrested, but the trauma was hard to shake, even years down the line. "It's just such a crystal-clear memory, and so it's hard almost not to feel the same way that I felt as a 12-year-old kid sitting in the back of that police cruiser," he explained, visibly emotional. 

Heartbreakingly, the car incident wasn't the only trauma inflicted on JD Vance as a child. He was also told from a very young age that his father had abandoned his family and that he didn't want him. However, he later found out that hadn't been the case at all. 

Though Donald Bowman had left Beverly Aikins while Vance was still young, he remained part of his son's life, albeit in a very minimal way. Even so, in "Hillbilly Elegy," Vance wrote, "I always felt loved when I spent time with him" (via Today). However, once Aikins and Bowman were officially divorced and the latter moved on, Vance was given some particularly devastating news. His father was giving him up for adoption, and his mother and grandmother told him it was because they "didn't want [him] anymore."

That would be a crushing blow for anyone. Making matters worse, though, it turned out it wasn't even true. Speaking of a conversation he and his biological father had when he was a teenager, Vance wrote that his dad cleared things up, and for the first time, he realized the story he'd been told was just that — a story. "The adoption had nothing to do with a desire to avoid child support and that, far from simply 'giving me away' as mom and mamaw had said, dad had hired multiple lawyers and done everything within reason to keep me," he wrote. As for why Bowman had ultimately stopped fighting for custody of his son, he told Vance that he had been concerned about the effect a drawn-out custody battle would have had on him. Admirable intentions, maybe — but it made for some serious heartache for his son. 

Regardless of his father's reasoning for giving him up for adoption, JD Vance spent most of his childhood and teenage years without a steady father figure, even an adopted one — and he has been very candid about the negative impact it had on him. In fact, in "Hillbilly Elegy," he went as far as saying, "Of all the things I hated about my childhood, nothing compared to the revolving door of father figures" (via People). 

We've already mentioned that Beverly Aikins had massive fights with her partners, and seeing that had a very big impact on a young Vance. However, it's worth noting that seeing all the tension in his mother's relationships brought about some dark thoughts in the now-politician. "When she lay sobbing in bed after another failed relationship, I felt a rage that could have driven me to kill," he said in his memoir, noted The New York Times. 

Regardless of her son's rage, Aikins had a number of relationships after her split from Donald Bowman. What's more, it's worth noting that his older sister also had a different dad, though Vance hasn't shared any details on Lindsay Ratliff's father. That said, it does explain the different surnames, which was another thing that frustrated Vance about his mother's relationship history. Speaking of Aikins' divorce from his adoptive father, Bob Hamel, whose last name he had taken during the marriage, Vance wrote, "One of the worst parts, honestly, was that Bob's departure would further complicate the tangled web of last names in our family."

Father figures aside, another major contributing factor to JD Vance and Lindsay Ratliff's tragic childhood was the fact that their single parent was an alcoholic and drug addict. "Hillbilly Elegy" made no secret of the fact that Beverly Aikins dealt with substance abuse during Vance's childhood and early adolescence. He also addressed it while campaigning in Michigan for the 2024 election and made a heartbreaking comment about the severity of her addiction. "I thought I would lose my mom when I was a kid. And I prayed every single day that she would somehow find her way to a second chance," he shared.

Shockingly, Aikins has admitted that she didn't realize the toll her addiction had taken on her son until years down the road. In fact, in an interview with The Movie Times, she shared that it was only once she read her son's memoir that she understood how badly it had affected him. "I didn't think that I was that bad of a mother. I do know that I was a drug addict, but I always knew that I had my parents. And I thought I was doing good by sending them to my mom's all the time, and in hindsight, I guess I should have been there more," she said. Aikins also said she didn't dispute any of Vance's memories, calling it an accurate depiction. 

Aikins has since turned her life around, and even though at the time of Vance's 2017 NBC News interview, they were still somewhat distanced, she plays a big role in her son's life today. Between spoiling his kids, whom he shares with his wife, Usha Vance, and joining him on the campaign trail, the mother and son are certainly in a better place — despite his difficult childhood.

Even though JD Vance faced significant trauma in his early years, he said that his sister was a comforting figure through it all. While he's certainly grateful to have had her help him through some of what he went through, there's no denying that her having to step into that role is heartbreaking. After all, Lindsay Ratliff is only five years older than her author brother. 

Speaking to Megyn Kelly for NBC News, Vance choked up when he described how his sister had stepped in after the horrific car ride where his mom threatened to kill him. "I think that that moment is kind of a microcosm of my entire life — is that there was this brief moment of terror and of feeling really lonely. And then there was Lindsay," he shared, his voice breaking. 

Ratliff was also interviewed for the segment and was equally emotional. "I would die for that kid. And I know he would, too," she told Kelly, tearing up just as her brother had. Devastatingly, Ratliff went on to say she felt guilty for not being more hands-on with her brother while he faced their mom's wrath. "I should have been able to do more," she said. Vance, meanwhile, shared that he had no ill will toward her and completely understood that she was trying to create a life for herself outside of the horrific circumstances they'd always known. Here's hoping Ratliff finds a way to give herself the grace she deserves at some point — her brother certainly has.  

In spite of his difficult childhood, JD Vance managed to get into Yale Law School. He ended up having a great social life on campus, and it's not exactly an untold truth that he met his wife, Usha Vance, there. However, the politician has also said that he struggled to fit in at the uber-elite university right at first. As he wrote in "Hillbilly Elegy," "Yale Law, with its prestige and privilege, was a culture shock unlike anything I had ever experienced" (via The New York Times).

Culture shock aside, Vance ended up making friends with a group of other students who didn't feel as though they belonged, either. However, one particularly sad detail is that in more recent years, his relationships with many of those same friends have taken a turn. One example is public defender Sofia Nelson, a friend of Vance's who told PBS Frontline that he brought them food after their gender-affirming surgery. As such, Nelson was shocked when he expressed his support for an Arkansas bill that would oppose gender-affirming care for minors. More than that, though, Nelson explained that he'd been pretty dismissive when they tried to bring it up (despite having talked out their differences in opinion respectfully for years). "There used to be this listen-to-understand relationship that we both engaged in, which I think requires a level of generosity of spirit that we've lost, in part because of what Donald Trump has done to our culture," they mused. 

Vance hasn't addressed Nelson's comments personally, though a statement his spokesperson made to The New York Times affirmed that he still cared about his years-long friendship and wished Nelson well. Even so, it's sad that a once healthy and respectful dynamic has fallen by the wayside.