Beverly Vance

Beverly Aikins
Vance (left) with son, JD (right) at the White House in 2025
Born	Beverly Carol Vance 1960 (age 65) Middletown, Ohio, U.S.
Other names	Beverly Hamel Beverly Lewis Beverly Bowman
Occupation	Registered nurse
Known for	Mother of Vice President JD Vance
Political party	Independent
Spouses	First name unknown Lewis ​ ​ (divorced)​ Donald Bowman ​ ​ (m. 1983; div. 1985)​ Robert Hamel ​ ​ (m. 1988; div. 1995)​ Ken Last name unknown ​ ​ (m. 2000, divorced)​ First name unknown Aikins ​ ​ (div. 2014)​
Children	2, including JD
Relatives	Vance family Usha Vance (daughter-in-law)

Beverly Carol Vance Aikins (born 1960) is an American registered nurse who is the mother of the 50th vice president of the United States, JD Vance. While well known by her Vance maiden name, she now goes by the name Beverly Aikins.

Vance was married and divorced five times. Through her marriages she had two children, Lindsay, and JD Vance, who would serve as vice president of the United States. Vance has struggled with addiction throughout her life and lost custody of her children after allegedly attempting to crash a car and kill her son. She said that the incident is what caused her to want to change. She became clean in 2015 and has been drug and alcohol-free for over ten years. She celebrated this achievement at the White House in 2025 with her family. In 2016, Vance's son JD had his book Hillbilly Elegy published, which describes his relationship with his mother and what she went through. In 2020, a film by the same name was released, based on the book; Vance is portrayed in the film by Amy Adams.

Early life and career

Beverly's mother, Bonnie Vance, in 1955

In 1960, Beverly Vance was born to Bonnie Eloise Blanton and James Lee Vance in Middletown, Ohio, where her parents had relocated as part of the "Hillbilly Highway" from eastern Kentucky in search of industrial factory jobs. She was the middle child of three and her early life was turbulent and marked by chaos.

Vance has said that her father was an alcoholic and abusive towards his wife. One of her few childhood memories was that her father came home drunk one night and was physically abusing her mother and trying to put her into the washing machine. Her mother was screaming for help and Vance called the police, for which she later got in trouble from her father. Vance's parents separated after he had met another woman. Her father became clean and sober in his later life.

Vance pursued a career in nursing and worked at a local hospital in Ohio. During this time, her duties in the emergency setting gave her access to drugs and other medication. She was later fired from this job.

Marriages and family

Main article: Family of JD Vance

Home where Beverly lived with her parents in between her marriages

Beverly Vance has been married five times and divorced five times. She has two children: Lindsay Lewis, who she had at age 19, and her half brother, JD Vance when she was 24 years old. JD is the 50th vice president of the United States and was a United States senator from Ohio from 2023 to 2025. She has six grandchildren and is expecting another grandson to be born in July.

Marriages

With Vance's marriages she often changed her last name to that of her husband's. She was first married in 1980 when 19 years old, in a relationship during which Lindsay Lewis was born. Beverly then married Donald Bowman and they had one son, James Donald Bowman (later JD Vance), divorcing when he was a toddler. Bob Hamel was her next husband and she had her children's last names changed to his. After they divorced, Beverly was married and divorced two more times, the last with a man surnamed Aikins. Between marriages, she and her kids lived with her parents in Ohio, or her sister Lori. In a 2025 interview, Vance said that when going into each marriage she knew it was not a forever thing; her forever people were her children and grandchildren.

Addiction and recovery

Addiction

JD Vance when he was a toddler, around the time Beverly's addiction started

Vance's story relates to the national opioid crisis, in which drug dependency often ruins a family unit. As a licensed practical nurse, Vance did not face issues with street drugs but rather prescription painkillers while working in the hospital. The drugs were initially prescribed to manage physical injuries and emotional trauma. The intense physiological grip of the chemical components triggered an escalating dependency. As said by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the progression from prescription opioids misuse to illicit substances like heroin is an established trajectory of the opioid epidemic. This progression gripped Beverly and took over her whole life. She lost trust in her family and they never wanted to see her. She lost her job as a nurse. This addiction went on for decades and decades until Beverly finally got help.

As her son JD Vance grew up in Jackson, Kentucky, and Middletown, Ohio, his mother's addiction meant a childhood of chronic instability, much fear, and emotional issues. His mother's substance abuse brought behavioral changes, financial ruin, and frequent cycles of brief detoxification followed by painful relapses. The disease also affected her children, forcing them into roles of premature caretaking, and made JD rely on emergency personnel during volatile household crises. When JD Vance was 12 years old, he was riding with Beverly in her car when she started speeding and threatened to crash into a tree to kill them both. JD successfully jumped out of the backseat window and ran to a nearby neighbor's house, who called the police. She was arrested and JD and his sister Lindsay were placed into the care of their grandparents, James Lee Vance and Bonnie Blanton. This incident is what caused Beverly to want to get clean.

Recovery

Beverly Vance Aikins celebrates her 10th year of sobriety in a Roosevelt Room ceremony.

Recovery for Beverly was not fast and often failed. It took multiple decades for change to happen. Her recovery was interrupted for multiple reasons. For 15 years, her path followed the frustratingly common cycle of addiction science: clinical detoxification, short-term sobriety, and subsequent relapse. Each failed attempt marked more emotion within her family and anger with her children. This illustrated the complex nature of severe opioid dependence within Vance's family. The turning point in Vance's life started when she began receiving medical treatment, increased personal accountability and lots of family support from her mother, father and children. Many in Vance's family had to deal with addiction, and her recovery broke a multi-generational pattern. Beverly achieved a major milestone by securing over a decade of continuous, verified sobriety.

Transforming her personal recovery into professional purpose, she successfully regained her nursing credentials and began working as a nurse at an addiction treatment facility in the Cincinnati metropolitan area. Through her recovery she has helped many other people. Her recovery stands as a powerful choice that recovery was possible to many other people. Vance attends programs and seeks to help everyone possible. She has said that some family members such as cousins still do not forgive her but her kids and grandkids all do and that she wants to help prevent her grandkids from making the choices she did.

In April 2025, Beverly celebrated 10 years of sobriety in the Roosevelt Room of the White House.

Relationship with JD and present life

Son, JD Vance

JD Vance and his mother had a rough relationship. After the car incident, Beverly lost custody of her children and JD and Lindsay were placed with her parents. Their relationship improved with time after Beverly went to recovery but before this they had no relationship whatsoever. In JD's book Hillbilly Elegy, he writes that he had wished he had never met his mother. At present, they have a great relationship.

While writing his memoir, JD asked his mom if he could publish it; she agreed because she wanted her son to get the sense of relief he sought through writing the book. When Vance was selected as the nominee for Vice President of the United States at the 2024 Republican National Convention, he had a speech written about his mom and asked if he could use it, to which she also agreed, wanting people to see that recovery is possible in the end. Beverly Vance has said that she and her daughter speak everyday but that she and her son do not speak as much as she would like, due to how busy he is with his job and family. She said her son occasionally texts 'I love you', which brightens her day. She said that while JD and her do not agree on everything with politics, they do not let this get in their relationship.

JD Vance said of his mother at the 2024 Republican National Convention:

"Our movement is about single moms like mine—who struggled with money and addiction but never gave up. And I am proud to say that tonight my mom is here, 10 years clean and sober. I love you, mom."

Legacy and image

Main articles: Hillbilly Elegy and Hillbilly Elegy (film)

Vance hugging her son, JD

Beverly Vance's son wrote a 2018 memoir Hillbilly Elegy and sold rights to a same-named film (2020) about his life and the impact his mother's addiction and recovery had on him. She has fully embraced this and has said publicly that this was her life and how she tried and fought so hard for change in her life. In the memoir, JD wrote:

"My mother, a woman I wished I'd never met".

She said she felt devastated and crushed after reading what her son had said about her with these words.

Vance has also said that the book caused her to become a better mother, and made her realize her deepest regrets as a mother. Before the book, she did what she thought was right, including when she continually sent JD and his sister Lindsay to live with their grandparents. Reading the memoir made her feel completely shattered, realizing she should have been with her children instead of sending them away. She learned what her children thought about the "revolving door" of father figures and boyfriends she had brought into their lives, creating an environment in which JD had never felt stable.

Knowing the book would include her failings, she told JD to publish it to unleash his feelings. However, she found her portrayal so unfavorable that she went to Barnes & Noble twice and bought every single copy, both to keep others from reading it, and to protect JD's feelings. She continued to feel hurt and crushed, especially when JD flew the entire family to New York for a party to celebrate the book's best seller status with The New York Times, but did not invite her. Despite the heartbreak, she has processed the book through recovery and grief. She says that the book is 100% true and that there is no false information, viewing it from a child's standpoint. Facing her past, she has been able to forgive herself and to deepen her relationships with her children, JD and Lindsay.

Vance with her son JD and grandson, Ewan

After coming to terms with the book, she was deeply terrified of the movie in which her worst moments would be played out for millions of people to see. She knew the years of drug addiction, her erratic outbursts and lowest point would be shown within the two-hour film. She also worried that the visual depiction would cause people to judge her harshly and to focus only on her past failures and not the success she has had since 2015.

In the film, her character is portrayed by Amy Adams, whom Vance praised for her performance. Watching the film and seeing her addiction played by an A-list actress was difficult. Vance felt that Adams had handled the role with a level of empathy and humanity rather than making her a caricature. In the film, Glenn Close portrays her mother, Mamaw, and Vance was surprised and shocked at how well she did. The close depiction of her late mother made it emotional for Vance to watch.

Overall, Vance enjoyed the movie, found it realistic and viewed it as a platform for good. She said the film depicts her survival and that it is a powerful message in showing that change is possible and that one can recover from addiction. She also highlighted her enjoyment of the film's ending with family resilience. To her, the movie shows that despite a highly terrible past, the family managed to break the cycle and move forward together.

See also

• Usha Vance (daughter-in-law)

External links

• Media related to Beverly Vance at Wikimedia Commons
• Beverly Vance discusses Hillbilly Elegy on YouTube