Amber Portwood Shares Rare Update on Her Life After ‘Teen Mom’
Amber Portwood has returned to social media after a lengthy hiatus.
The Teen Mom alum, 36, took to her YouTube channel on Thursday, September 10, to share an update on her life away from reality TV cameras and reveal her plans for a new podcast.
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“This is what I’ve done for 20 years on television,” she shared. “I’ve literally just let myself go on television for 20 years. I said, ‘OK, you can film me, so I can make some money to pay my bills, take care of my daughter.’ … I decided to make sure that people are always going to be aware that what is given to them is 100 percent.”
Portwood rose to fame in 2009 on the MTV reality series 16 and Pregnant, which documented her pregnancy with daughter Leah, whom she shares with ex Gary Shirley. She then appeared on the spinoff series Teen Mom from 2009 to 2025.
Portwood has been the subject of multiple controversies throughout her career, including a 2010 incident where footage of the mom of two physically assaulting Shirley, 39, aired on Teen Mom. Portwood was arrested and charged with felony domestic battery. Though she was initially placed on probation in 2011 and ordered to attend rehab for drug addiction, she later opted to serve a five-year prison sentence and was released in November 2013 after 17 months behind bars.
In 2019, Portwood was arrested again following a domestic violence incident with ex Andrew Glennon and their then-infant son, James. She pleaded guilty to domestic battery and received probation, along with court-mandated parenting classes.
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“To try to speak about who I was back then is so hard for me to explain, because you don’t feel the same anymore,” Portwood said on Thursday before noting, “I act cocky sometimes. I get a little s***ty. I have my manic episodes because I am manic depressive. I do have a couple mental illnesses.” (Portwood was previously diagnosed with bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder.)
“The one thing I could say is that I can process things today easier than I did in the beginning of my life,” she continued. “I can understand things and understand why I am who I am today. I know who I am today. What I’m trying to say, in lesser words, is I’m just an honest, real person today at the age of 36 [and] was an honest and real person that was on television for 20 years. I made a career out of it because of that exact thing, and I also made a career out of it because I was infamous. I’ve been in trouble so many times with drugs, alcohol, anything that you want to think about.”
Sharing her plans for her new podcast, Portwood teased that every episode would be different.
“Topics are going to be everywhere. It has nothing to do with mania,” she said. “It has to do with just what I know about things, what I’ve experienced myself, the education I’ve had, mostly in psychology, though, and that’s about it. And just how I’ve grown.”
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This story was originally published September 11, 2026 at 3:25 PM.
