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Aaron Rodgers is rebuilding his relationship with his family after being estranged from them for more than 10 years.
The Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback shared photos on Instagram Monday, July 20, showing him with his mother, Darla Rodgers, and father, Ed Rodgers, in separate images.
Aaron has previously said the rift with his family began in 2014.
Family reunion
While Aaron was smiling alongside his parents, one family member was missing from the photo dump — his younger brother, Jordan Rodgers.
Although Jordan did not appear in the photos, Aaron did share a snap of himself with his older brother, Luke Rodgers, with the two smiling together on a couch.
Aaron also posted a few pictures with the youngest members of the family. He seemed to be on full uncle duty with Luke’s kids, Evie, 2, and Jack, 4, whom Luke shares with wife Aimee Rodgers.
The football star shared a photo of himself fixing a toy and another holding his niece’s hand. “Another bonding week. #fam,” Aaron wrote in the caption.
Family estrangement
It’s a big deal for the Rodgers family, especially given the Super Bowl champ has been pretty open about the messy reasons behind their estrangement.
“I was very fortunate when I was a kid to have parents who believed I had a very low pain tolerance,” Aaron said in the 2024 Netflix docuseries Aaron Rodgers: Enigma. “There’s some lessons that were hard to learn as a child, and you react or you adapt to whatever it is.”
“I felt like there was many times where my parents felt like I was a little soft,” he added. “And because of that, I made sure I was the toughest motherf***** that I knew.”
‘Your life is too big’
Aaron said all the attention surrounding his career only made it harder to repair the rift.
“When I became real famous, family members said, ‘Your life is too big. We need you to be smaller. Be smaller, like, don’t talk about your life,'” he continued.
“It always hurt me because I just feel like, you don’t see me. And so as I found my voice to kind of question things, I also found doing things that, compared to what I grew up in, would be considered an alternative lifestyle.”
Mending the relationship
Aaron said the relationship started to heal in 2023 when his father got a ticket to the American Century Championship in Lake Tahoe, California, to watch him compete.
In his 2024 biography Out of the Darkness: The Mystery of Aaron Rodgers by Ian O’Connor, Aaron recalled seeing his father as he headed to the bathroom during the tournament. His first instinct was to leave, but he decided speaking to his dad was the right choice.
“I could do a lot of things,” Aaron said in the book. “But I just thought, ‘What’s best in this moment, and what kind of gift could I give him?’ Because I do love him. I don’t have animosity toward him, even with all the stuff that’s been said and done.”
Aaron said he was thankful they had the chance to reconnect, later telling a friend, “I think that was what needed to happen.”
