Kimberly Guilfoyle adored her mother, Mercedes Guilfoyle. She was insightful and loving, but also a lot of fun. “I worshipped my mom, could never get enough of being around her,” she told Harper’s Bazaar in 2004. “She was such fun — cooked, sang, drew, a great athlete.” However, her time with Mercedes was short. In November 1980, her mother died of leukemia in September 1980. She was just 37, and Kimberly was 11. Besides her daughter, Mercedes also left behind an 8-year-old son and a husband. 

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That means Kimberly and her brother, Anthony Guilfoyle Jr., were raised by a single father, something she always admired. “Thank you for the incredible job you did as a single father raising Anthony and I after our sweet mother Mercedes passed away. She knew you would do an amazing job with us,” she wrote in a 2021 Instagram post. The loss of her mother isn’t the only sad detail about Kimberly. Her father also died from cancer in November 2008, when she was in her late 30s.

While devastating, she was an adult with her own life then. Losing her mother when she was just a child was more than heartbreaking — it changed every aspect of her life. As the only female figure left in the household, she tried to fill in the void left by her mother. It was an impossible role, but she doesn’t feel sorry for herself. Kimberly may have only had a decade with her mother, but it was enough to impart a lifetime of lessons.

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Following her mother’s death, Kimberly Guilfoyle often found herself having to step into a maternal role for Anthony Guilfoyle Jr. “I was raising my little brother since he was 8,” she told Mediaite in 2015. While no 11-year-old should ever be in that position, Kimberly believes the experience taught her to put others before herself, skills she would later apply in her career as a prosecutors. “It made me a better mother, better person. But it hasn’t been about me for a very, very long time. When you’re forced to survive, you learn to navigate for yourself and advocate for others,” she said.

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But it wasn’t just Kimberly’s life circumstances that taught her how to advocate for herself and others. Mercedes Guilfoyle spent her short time with her daughter showing her that she should always fight for what she wanted. When she was in second grade, Kimberly was obsessed with playing soccer. But there was only a boys team at her school.  “My mother said to the coach, ‘Give her a tryout. If she’s good enough, she should be on the team. If she’s not, then she shouldn’t.’ Well, I made the team,'” she told SFGate in 2001.

She may be grateful for the time she had with her mother, but that doesn’t make her loss any easier. Kimberly never really got over it. “Time, however, does not heal all wounds; [it] just makes it easier to function,” she said in the Harper’s Bazaar interview. 

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