Priscilla Presley has always lived in the shadow of a story much bigger than her own life. As the former wife of Elvis Presley and the matriarch of one of the most famous families in American music history, her name is inextricably linked to both the myth and the tragedy of the Presley legacy. At eighty years old, Priscilla has decided to reveal some of the most painful truths she has carried, opening up in her new memoir Softly, As I Leave You: Life After Elvis about her deeply fractured relationship with her only daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, in the years before Lisa Marie’s untimely death.
It is a story steeped in love and loss, but also in betrayal, estrangement, and the kind of mother-daughter conflict that cuts deeper than anything else. In early passages of the book, Priscilla describes how the rift between her and Lisa Marie grew in ways that she never could have predicted, particularly during Lisa Marie’s fourth and final marriage to musician Michael Lockwood. That marriage, as Priscilla recounts, was a whirlwind of dysfunction, legal battles, and devastating allegations—circumstances that not only tore Lisa Marie apart emotionally but also dragged her mother into an impossible position.
Lisa Marie, who had long battled with substance abuse issues including opioids, painkillers, cocaine, and alcohol, filed for divorce from Lockwood in June 2016. What followed was a bitter and highly publicized court battle, with Lisa Marie accusing her estranged husband of child abuse and sexual misconduct involving their twin daughters, Harper and Finley. At the time, Lockwood’s attorney dismissed the accusations as “highly sensational” and “inaccurate,” while Lockwood himself said he was “disgusted” by what he called “unproven allegations.”
For Priscilla, watching her daughter spiral into turmoil while fighting for custody of the twins was heartbreaking. Yet, it was not until Lisa Marie made a desperate request that their relationship truly began to splinter. In a bid for sole custody, Lisa Marie asked her mother to sign a deposition declaring that Michael Lockwood was unfit to parent. To Priscilla, this request was impossible. As she writes in her memoir, she had never personally witnessed the behavior Lisa Marie was describing and to sign such a document would be, in her eyes, committing perjury. “I told her I couldn’t sign it, for I had never seen Michael behave in the harmful ways she was alleging. Signing it would be perjury,” she recalls.
The refusal was a turning point. For Lisa Marie, her mother’s decision was not simply a legal stance but a betrayal. It represented the one thing she needed most and did not receive: unconditional backing. “To her, it was a betrayal,” Priscilla admits in her book, with a blunt honesty that reveals just how much this moment haunted her. When the court ultimately awarded Lockwood regular visitation rights with the twins, Lisa Marie’s anger only deepened. “Her anger fueled what I feared most: estrangement from my daughter,” Priscilla writes, remembering the sharp break in their bond.
In those passages, the pain is palpable. For Priscilla, there was the constant ache of knowing that her relationship with her daughter, once close, was no longer what it had been. “I knew with a stab to my heart that she would never completely forgive me. And she never did,” she reflects. The grief is even heavier with the knowledge that just a few years later, Lisa Marie would die suddenly at the age of fifty-four from complications related to bariatric surgery. “I didn’t know yet that I would soon lose her permanently,” Priscilla continues. “The events poisoning our lives would prove fatal.”
Despite the distance that grew between them, there were still moments where mother and daughter found themselves reconnecting, albeit briefly. One of those came in 2022 when Baz Luhrmann’s extravagant biopic Elvis reignited cultural fascination with the Presley family. Working together on aspects of the project allowed Priscilla and Lisa Marie to bridge some of the bitterness that had separated them. For a time, it seemed like the film reminded them both of the bigger picture—the family legacy, the man they both loved, and the shared responsibility of keeping Elvis’s memory alive.
But the fragile reconciliation did not last long. Sofia Coppola’s 2023 film Priscilla, which told the story of Priscilla’s relationship with Elvis from her own perspective, became another wedge. Lisa Marie despised the script, according to her mother, and felt it portrayed her father in a negative light—“vengeful and contemptuous” were the words Lisa Marie reportedly used. For Lisa Marie, the film was not only an attack on Elvis’s image but also a direct conflict with her mother. Priscilla recalls how her daughter felt trapped, worrying she would be forced to speak publicly against Coppola’s film, and by extension, against her own mother.
“She would be forced to speak out publicly against Sofia, against the film, and, in doing so, against me,” Priscilla explains. That fear never materialized. Lisa Marie died six weeks after Priscilla finished shooting, never having to witness the public conversations that the film inevitably sparked. Her death left behind not just unanswered questions but an unhealed wound in her relationship with her mother. “I don’t know how she would have felt if she had actually seen the movie,” Priscilla admits. “I hope she would have been proud of me.”
There is something particularly haunting about a mother writing about estrangement with a child who is no longer here to answer back. Priscilla’s memoir is not a one-sided account meant to vindicate herself, but it is unavoidably colored by her own perspective and regrets. In passages where she describes her refusal to back Lisa Marie’s custody claims, readers can feel both the firmness of her conviction and the sting of hindsight. It is clear that even now, Priscilla wonders whether there was another way, some different path that could have avoided the rupture.
The Presley family has always lived in the glare of public fascination, but what Priscilla reveals in this memoir is far more intimate than any tabloid headline. It is a reminder that behind the glamour, the Presley name carries a legacy of heartbreak. Elvis himself died young, at just forty-two, leaving Lisa Marie fatherless at nine years old. Lisa Marie’s adult life was marked by addiction, financial troubles, and the staggering grief of losing her own son, Benjamin Keough, to suicide in 2020. And now, with Lisa Marie’s death in 2023, Priscilla is left to mourn both her daughter and the fractured relationship they never fully repaired.
In many ways, Priscilla’s book is less about Elvis than it is about survival—her own survival as a woman who has had to live through loss after loss, and her attempt to make peace with choices that can never be undone. By opening up about her estrangement with Lisa Marie, she is not only sharing her truth but also exposing the deep scars that fame, addiction, and complicated family ties can leave behind.
At eighty years old, Priscilla Presley remains a figure of resilience, still navigating the weight of her past while facing the reality of growing older without her daughter. Her words carry both wisdom and sorrow, and the honesty of her memoir suggests that she is no longer trying to maintain the image of perfection that has so often been projected onto her. Instead, she is simply telling her story—raw, flawed, and unfiltered.
What lingers most in her recollections is not anger or blame but regret. Regret that she and Lisa Marie never truly reconciled, regret that her daughter never forgave her, and regret that the pressures of fame, divorce, and addiction poisoned what could have been a closer bond in their final years together. Still, Priscilla finds some measure of solace in the hope that Lisa Marie, wherever she is now, understands her choices and knows the depth of her love.
The Presley family name may forever be etched in history because of Elvis’s music, but Priscilla’s memoir reminds us that the legacy is also one of fractured relationships, human frailty, and the private costs of living in a public world. Her words make it clear that no amount of fame or fortune can shield a mother from the heartbreak of losing her child, especially when that loss comes with the weight of unresolved estrangement.
As Softly, As I Leave You reaches readers, it will undoubtedly stir conversations not just about Elvis and his family but also about the universal pain of complicated family dynamics. At its core, Priscilla’s story is one that many will recognize: the heartbreak of a parent and child at odds, the regrets that come with time running out, and the lingering hope that love, even if unspoken or unacknowledged, endures beyond death.