TORONTO – Actress-singer Gloria Loring didn’t want to delve into tell-all territory with her new spiritually charged autobiography, “Coincidence Is God’s Way of Remaining Anonymous.”
“My purpose was not to expose every nook and cranny of my life,” says the former “Days of our Lives” star, who was once married to Canadian actor Alan Thicke and had two sons with him, including pop star Robin Thicke.
“My purpose was to tell the story of why coincidence comes into our lives and how we can use it for our benefit, and to use my own life as an example.”
But in writing about such spiritual inspiration, Loring felt compelled to divulge how it led to her remembering a traumatic incident involving her father when she was young.
As the book explains, Loring was meditating one day when she started communicating with an angel who told her she was sexually abused by her father at age three.
Through therapy, Loring remembered the incident happened one night when her alcoholic father was drunk and he fell on top of her, aroused.
When Loring remembered the incident, her father was in a nursing home with Parkinson’s disease and she felt it was time to forgive.
“I know that I have to forgive in the same ways I would want to be forgiven,” Loring, who played singer Liz Chandler on “Days of our Lives,” says by phone from New York.
“I’m sure along the way my selfishness or thoughtlessness or my own needs bumped up against someone else’s and has caused them hurt or pain. My father, I know without a doubt, in that particular instance, it was not a rape. It was just a sexualized encounter, because he was aroused and fell on top of me. But I was only three. It was like my world came to an end and something in me shattered.
“He was very drunk. He lost his mother when he was just five years old, or four. Very, very difficult. Who am I to judge him? And if I can do that for my father, I can do that for anyone.”
“Coincidence Is God’s Way of Remaining Anonymous: Reflections on Daytime Dramas and Divine Intervention” is a self-help guide of sorts, as Loring details how events in her life led her to believe in “the divine source/connecting principle that brings us coincidences.”
Loring, who has meditated for several decades, did mounds of research on coincidence and quantum physics for the book and offers advice on how to follow intuition.
The first half of the title – “Coincidence Is God’s Way of Remaining Anonymous” – is an Albert Einstein quote.
Loring says she started paying attention to coincidences after a business card with the message “Expect a Miracle” mysteriously appeared in her “Days” dressing room. It came a day before she met a man who helped her raise $1 million for research into diabetes – a disease her son Brennan was diagnosed with at age four – with the “Days of Our Lives Celebrity Cookbook.”
That led to several other “Days” cookbooks for diabetes research, as well as Loring’s own record company, from which she also raised funds for the cause.
The California-based co-composer and singer of “The Facts of Life” TV theme song, whose other tunes include the hit “Friends and Lovers,” also runs down her life story in the book.
Born in New York and raised in Minneapolis, Loring was a night-club singer and go-go girl before a contract on “The Merv Griffin Show” led to hundreds of variety TV show appearances.
She met Thicke while performing in Toronto at the Royal York Hotel.
Seven months later they married in the city and moved to Los Angeles. And four years after that they had their first son, Brennan.
“I had so many of those early times coming up to Toronto at Christmas time, and then when the boys were little, coming up for Christmas – and the cabbage rolls and the tourtiere,” says Loring, pronouncing Toronto “Trawna,” like some locals do.
“It was just a wonderful time, and I love the Canadian sensibility, I love the down-to-earth quality … and I love the ‘eh.’ We had a party one night and somebody started in on it, it was very funny, and they said, ‘You work for the CBC, eh?’ ‘Yeah, yeah, I’ve got an MBA and now I work at the CBC, eh,’ and they went on and on,” she adds with a howl.
Loring’s book doesn’t specify what ended the marriage, but the two are still on good terms, she says.
“My sons don’t need – nobody needs to know – all the little nooks and crannies,” adds Loring. “My marriage to Alan absolutely succeeded on so many levels. I learned so much from being married to him, he was so funny.
“I probably stayed married five years longer than I would have, because he was so bloody funny he’d make me laugh when I wanted to wring his neck. We were just very different people, which so many married people are.”
Loring’s book also includes some behind-the-scenes tidbits from the set of “Days,” where she got to sing some of the theme songs.
One of her co-stars, for instance, was known for her temper and threw a large trash can across the stage and barely missed Loring.
“Everybody wants to know who threw the trash can. I’m not telling!” Loring says with a laugh.
“I didn’t even know I had a tiff with her. She was known for volatility at the time. She evidently has mellowed since, so that’s nice.”
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