Dina Manzo Talks About New Jersey's Real Housewives … for the Last Time

BY TIM NUDD Everyone's always pressing Dina Manzo for dirt about her old show, the Real Housewives of New Jersey. Now, the former cast member is coming clean – in what she claims will be the last time she'll ever speak about the Bravo show.

"It's a shame this TV show used to be about our lives and now some lives are just about a TV show. That's not how it should be," Manzo, 39, writes in a lengthy blog post on her website.

Manzo, now host of HGTV's event-planning show Dina's Party, recaps why she left the Housewives – she needed to escape "all of the toxic behavior" – and admit she distanced herself from all of the housewives after her exit.

She then briefly weighs in on the current war between Teresa Guidice and Caroline Manzo. "If this is all about a joke in a book (and [Teresa] assured me it was) that's not enough for me to hate the mother of my God daughter and a friend of 15 years," she writes. "Was it necessary to write that stuff in her book? probably not but I don't think it was written with malice either."

She adds: "I feel bad that my relationship with my sister and her family is strained, but I can assure you that one day it will be back to the way it was."

Mostly, Manzo says she loves her family, wishes them the best, and hopes they can take a higher road on the show. "I say we change this housewives thing around and show the world what we're really made of!" she writes. "Let's lift each other up instead of trying to tear one another down. Lets showcase what women are capable of, what I thought this show was going to be back in the day~ Running successful businesses, supporting amazing causes, raising incredible children and looking fabulous every step of the way." Not that she's holding her breath. "Unfortunately, not sure what the ratings on that would be," she writes, "so I doubt that will happen."