Christie Brinkley Reveals Her Biological Father Hit Her with a Belt and ‘Always Seemed to Find Reason to Punish Me’ (Exclusive)

When writing about her childhood in her new memoir, Uptown Girl, Christie Brinkley says, “I delved back into my memories, and I realized the memories were like a broken film.”  

Memories of her biological father, Herb Hudson, coming home at the end of the day — and the fear of a little girl. In her emotionally revealing new book, excerpted in this week’s PEOPLE, the 71-year-old supermodel shares that her biological dad, Herb Hudson, hit her with a belt when she was a young girl.

“My mom and Herb were married for at least a decade until they got divorced when I was 8,” she writes in the book. “Nearly every night, after Herb came home from work as a milkman, he took off his belt and whipped me. Other nights, he’d take me into the bathroom and wash my mouth out with soap, scouring until I tasted lye. It didn’t matter how good or quiet I was: Herb always seemed to find a reason to punish me.”

For more on Christie Brinkley, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday, or subscribe here.

The last time she saw Hudson was in a L.A. County courtroom just before her mother remarried a kind and thoughtful television writer, Don Brinkley, and Hudson gave up his parental rights to Christie and her older brother, Greg. 

When Hudson told the judge that day he was giving up those rights, she writes, “I was stunned [and thinking] Why didn’t he love me?”

Then the judge asked Don Brinkley if he would accept full parental responsibility for the siblings. “Yes, absolutely,” he responded.  She felt a huge sense of relief. 

“It was very uncomfortable for me to write that part of the book,” Brinkley shares in an exclusive interview in this week’s PEOPLE. “I describe it in the book as a black-and-white movie. I think a lot of memories were sort of in these snippets of film that were cut out and thrown away so I didn’t have to think about it.” 

Looking back, she thinks that has to do with how painful it was. “I think because my mom had a certain amount of trauma associated with him as well, that my mom wanted to pretend that that part of our life didn’t exist and that’s what we did.”

“To anyone we met, Don Brinkley was my dad,” she says. ”We didn’t say she remarried and she just wanted it to be like they were together forever. I think it was her way of erasing him and I somehow also understood that.”

She credits the relationship between Brinkley and her mom with providing her an example of what a healthy relationship could look like. “I could see their love, and they were so good to each other,” she says. “They loved, laughed and protected each other. They had it all. It was tangible and it filled up a room.”

As she says, “They never had a sip of wine without at least reaching across the table, they would touch fingers, like plugging into a life source. It was beautiful so I know that true love exists and I know that it’s possible to be lasting and to grow until the very end.”

Uptown Girl by Christie Brinkley comes out April 29 from Harper Influence and is available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.