Speaker 1: Hey, fam I'm Jada Pinkett Smith and this is the
Speaker 1: Red Table Pop podcast, all your favorite episodes from the
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Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. Please don't forget to rate and review
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, you guys. I'm so excited that to
Speaker 1: Me and her daughters are here. Oh my goodness. To
Speaker 1: Me Moore is making headlines with her explosive new book,
Speaker 1: Inside Out, The number one New York Times bestseller, is
Speaker 1: filled with deeply personal accounts of her painful past, including
Speaker 1: being raped at fifteen by a man who paid her
Speaker 1: mother five dollars. Her deeply troubled mother was an alcoholic
Speaker 1: who attempted suicide when Demi was just a child. To
Speaker 1: Me struggled with her own addictions, but got sober and
Speaker 1: didn't use for almost twenty years. After her divorce from
Speaker 1: Bruce Willis, to Me found love again with Ashton Kutcher,
Speaker 1: but she relapsed and eventually that marriage ended two Spinning
Speaker 1: out of control, Did Me hit a new loan and
Speaker 1: she was rushed to the hospital after taking drugs at
Speaker 1: a party. She found herself alone and estranged from her family.
Speaker 1: Did Me More and her daughter's come to the Red
Speaker 1: Table to talk about the pain passed down from parent
Speaker 1: to child. Welcome to me and Lula, thank you. This
Speaker 1: is such a nice treat. Is I remember doing dinner
Speaker 1: with you and Will Bruce and I, Yes, at the
Speaker 1: ivy at the shore. You guys, I don't even think
Speaker 1: we're married. I don't know. I don't think you were married. Yes,
Speaker 1: And then we came to your house in Malibu. Remember.
Speaker 1: So what really hit me about your book. I was
Speaker 1: reading about your relationship with your mother, reading about your journey,
Speaker 1: and then your relationship with your girls, and me thinking
Speaker 1: about my relationship with my mother. My mother's twenty eight
Speaker 1: years clean, Okay, congratulations, that's incredible, twenty eight years and
Speaker 1: then also thinking about Willow. One of the reasons for
Speaker 1: the Red Table and to have these generational conversations is
Speaker 1: to try to break some of the cycles. I've had
Speaker 1: a very codependent life, and I know that even today
Speaker 1: when Willow and I were having a conversation about some
Speaker 1: decisions as she was making, I was like, here is
Speaker 1: the codependency and she got that from me. Well. One
Speaker 1: of the things is that I started to look at
Speaker 1: issues that say Rumor had with her self esteem, that
Speaker 1: didn't not reflect her environment, her insecurity, herself loathing, just
Speaker 1: the torture of feeling not good enough, which is exactly
Speaker 1: what I had been dealing with for my whole life.
Speaker 1: She was carrying my the weight of my issue, and
Speaker 1: I understood where mine came from, but there was a
Speaker 1: agree of it that just didn't match from like super
Speaker 1: super little And another thing that I found really interesting,
Speaker 1: and it's something I know that you're working on. You know,
Speaker 1: you can tell your kids I love you, I love
Speaker 1: you so much every day, but if that's not reflected
Speaker 1: and how you feel about yourself as the mother, your
Speaker 1: kid is gonna pick up on that, you know, and
Speaker 1: not be able to necessarily take in. Oh, I'm so
Speaker 1: amazing because my mom says I'm amazing. If my mom
Speaker 1: doesn't love herself, like, how how can I? How can
Speaker 1: I expect her to love her? What did you see
Speaker 1: in your mother that you felt was a reflection of
Speaker 1: how you felt? Well, steel Um, A lot of the
Speaker 1: just like unworthiness, Like I'm innately unlovable somehow, no matter
Speaker 1: how I look, what I weigh, like how how my
Speaker 1: hair looks at whatever the outside reflection is, there's something
Speaker 1: innately about me that I have to earn love from
Speaker 1: people and like constantly proved myself that and a lot
Speaker 1: of the stuff with men. What about you two, Lula,
Speaker 1: And I think that it's apologizing for being here, which
Speaker 1: is language that my mom had and I have used
Speaker 1: a lot of trying to figure out where we fit
Speaker 1: into the equation and how to find the tiny little
Speaker 1: hole to hide into, trying to be invisible, being small
Speaker 1: and being invisible and like I'm just gonna hold everything
Speaker 1: together and get through and white knuckle, white knucklet And
Speaker 1: in the book, she talks about I think one of
Speaker 1: the first times she had sex and how she felt
Speaker 1: she needed to and how she felt like it was
Speaker 1: something expected of her, which is pretty much been my
Speaker 1: exact story, and that's not something that we talked about
Speaker 1: and shared. I felt like my mom made a choice
Speaker 1: to hold back certain things from like sharing about her past,
Speaker 1: and I think that always made me feel very far
Speaker 1: away from her and always made me feel like I
Speaker 1: didn't know her very well. So like I knew she
Speaker 1: had a career, she met my dad, she had wropen
Speaker 1: New Mexico, but it was like that that was it.
Speaker 1: I don't believe in archaeological digs, emotional archae logical digs
Speaker 1: for just the purpose of digging. But I don't think
Speaker 1: my mom was raised. She was forged, you know, like
Speaker 1: she was she was made, and the strength that comes
Speaker 1: from that it's intimidating and it's scary and it's and
Speaker 1: and I was growing up it was like I kind
Speaker 1: of feel that way about my It's like like towards
Speaker 1: in the firefly and the like you know, spark flying everywhere.
Speaker 1: I think we deified her. I think she was this
Speaker 1: larger than life being and she was. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: completely obsessed with her, like I love her more than
Speaker 1: a completely obsessed with my mom. What would you also
Speaker 1: say that you guys created a standard for me of
Speaker 1: of what you of your expectation that was also greater
Speaker 1: than what you would put on anybody else, like my
Speaker 1: like my room of my room for error was I
Speaker 1: will say, but I will say that, But also I
Speaker 1: think that that is a byproduct of im And I'm
Speaker 1: not saying this in a blaming way, but I think
Speaker 1: that that's also a byproduct of you not necessarily being
Speaker 1: weak in front of U. Fine, they're totally fine. All
Speaker 1: then in your mind as a kid, You're like, she's
Speaker 1: always good. You know, I get that a hundred percent.
Speaker 1: You opened the book at a place that really hit me.
Speaker 1: I was now completely alone. I was almost fifty. The
Speaker 1: husband who I thought was the love of my life
Speaker 1: had cheated on me, then decided he didn't want to
Speaker 1: work on our marriage. My children weren't speaking to me.
Speaker 1: Their father, a friend I had counted on for years
Speaker 1: was gone from my life. The career AT scrambled to
Speaker 1: create was stalled, or maybe it was over for good.
Speaker 1: Everything I was attached to, even my health, had abandoned me.
Speaker 1: I looked like I felt destroyed. Lord knows, I've been
Speaker 1: in places in my life where feeling alone end in
Speaker 1: and completely shattered. I had done so much work on myself,
Speaker 1: and to find myself in a worse place than I've
Speaker 1: ever been, it's like, how the did I get here?
Speaker 1: And so unraveling all the weight of my mother and
Speaker 1: all of those things. But when you're hiding certain things
Speaker 1: that you are holding onto, a shame, and that's what
Speaker 1: it was. I had a depth of shame that I
Speaker 1: held onto that was really like life or death. So
Speaker 1: can you explain why you guys weren't talking to your
Speaker 1: mom for three years. What happened was she relapsed when
Speaker 1: I was nine, and no one in our family spoke
Speaker 1: about it, and I had no idea what was going on.
Speaker 1: She've been still over my entire childhood. And then she drank,
Speaker 1: and then I just knew that I was scared um
Speaker 1: and that she was unsafe. And then there was sort
Speaker 1: of many years of saying she was sober and she
Speaker 1: wasn't and we couldn't trust it, and then all of
Speaker 1: the adults around us, in an effort to protect us,
Speaker 1: we're protecting her, and so if she wasn't sober, they
Speaker 1: would tell us she was, And so there was a
Speaker 1: complete lack of trusted Were you with Ashton then when
Speaker 1: she was nine years old? And ness when the re
Speaker 1: lefts happened? Yes, how it broke down, like you know,
Speaker 1: I opened that door to drinking after almost twenty years,
Speaker 1: and you and Ashton were trying to have a baby.
Speaker 1: I ended up pregnant and then I lost the baby
Speaker 1: at almost six months, and so when I couldn't get
Speaker 1: pregnant again, the guilt that I felt that it was
Speaker 1: clearly my fault was just enormous. So we went on
Speaker 1: this trip and Ashton said, I don't know if alcoholisms
Speaker 1: a thing. I think it's about moderation. And if I
Speaker 1: had stayed close to working my program, I of course,
Speaker 1: like I lived the majority of my adult life sober.
Speaker 1: I was great sober I had. I had no what
Speaker 1: if think that mental or emotional pull was to he
Speaker 1: wanted to be that girl? Yeah I was. I you know,
Speaker 1: I made my own story up that he wanted somebody
Speaker 1: that he could have wine with and do so he didn't.
Speaker 1: He's not the cause of why I opened that door.
Speaker 1: I wanted to be something other than who I am,
Speaker 1: right and I and I it was literally like giving
Speaker 1: my power away. Right. So much of that time, especially
Speaker 1: with Ashton, I was so angry because I felt like
Speaker 1: something that was mine had been taken away. And I
Speaker 1: think also when she wanted to have another baby, it
Speaker 1: was like and then it wasn't happening, and then there
Speaker 1: was so much focus on that it was like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: we're not enough. And part of the reason, like I
Speaker 1: moved out of the house was, um, I think after
Speaker 1: you had a miscarriage, I literally was just like, why
Speaker 1: are you so desperate to have another kid? And I
Speaker 1: couldn't stand the idea. But then I found these pictures
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh my god, I saw how
Speaker 1: bigger stomach was, and I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: Like I was so insensitive. I never once went to
Speaker 1: you and said I'm so sorry, like I'm are you okay?
Speaker 1: And I understand, and you know what, I want you
Speaker 1: to know that even in your sensitivity, it's okay to
Speaker 1: be angry. Yes, absolutely, you know, And that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: you don't love your mother, doesn't mean it wasn't just
Speaker 1: the addiction or or drinking again, the addiction in the codependency,
Speaker 1: like my addiction to Ashton, and that was probably almost
Speaker 1: more um devastating, because it it took me seriously away emotionally,
Speaker 1: you know, watching the behavior with Ashton those years, because
Speaker 1: everyone left the house and it was just me living there,
Speaker 1: and I felt very forgotten and I felt like I
Speaker 1: developed and I nurtured a narrative that she didn't love me, um,
Speaker 1: and I truly believe did and I know that she
Speaker 1: does a hundred percent. But in that moment, you're hurt
Speaker 1: and you can't fathom that someone that loves you would
Speaker 1: do that to you and would choose others more than
Speaker 1: you Scout and Tula had very different experiences than I
Speaker 1: had when we stopped talking to my mom. They didn't
Speaker 1: speak to her for three years. I went in and
Speaker 1: out as kind of like the ambassador for the family
Speaker 1: because at one point her friends are calling me and
Speaker 1: being like, I'm really worried about your mom, like you
Speaker 1: need to talk to her, and so then I'm like, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: like I have to go and fix this. And then
Speaker 1: my family basically kind of like shunned me and kind
Speaker 1: of called me a traitor for going to talk to her.
Speaker 1: And then I was like, then I'll have no one.
Speaker 1: I'll have my mom who's not capable of like being
Speaker 1: my mom right now, and then the rest of my
Speaker 1: family is just not going to speak to me anymore. Right,
Speaker 1: What was it that was scary and unsafe for you
Speaker 1: in regards to your mother's re left. It was like
Speaker 1: the sun went down and like like like a monster
Speaker 1: came out. Like I remember, there's just the anxiety that
Speaker 1: would come up in my body when I could sense
Speaker 1: like her eyes shedding a little bit more the way
Speaker 1: she was speaking, or she would be a lot more
Speaker 1: affectionate with me if she wasn't sober and I. It
Speaker 1: was starring and it was very weird, and there were
Speaker 1: moments where it would get angry, and I recall being
Speaker 1: very upset and kind of treating her like a child
Speaker 1: and speaking to her like a child and kind of
Speaker 1: being like, you know, please get away from me, and
Speaker 1: you know she was. She got very angry, and it
Speaker 1: would happen in front of friends, and it was it
Speaker 1: was not the mom that we had up. My mom
Speaker 1: held everything together. You had always chosen us, You would
Speaker 1: always put us first and made that a priority. Came
Speaker 1: to Idaho, like stopped working. Like being around a woman
Speaker 1: as your mother, who is this like infallible woman who
Speaker 1: can take on anything, even my dad? Like all of
Speaker 1: these fold that are you know that it's in control
Speaker 1: always like always together, always in control, not be in
Speaker 1: control around a man like who is this person? I
Speaker 1: don't know who this is? And I feel like they're
Speaker 1: supposed to be my my rock. They are supposed to
Speaker 1: be the one who is like and especially it's even
Speaker 1: more I think exaggerated or exacerbated because your baseline was
Speaker 1: so the opposite. Yeah, you know, it's not like this
Speaker 1: was what they knew, completely different. That's that's what I'm
Speaker 1: that's what I'm hearing. Dem says that her rock bottom
Speaker 1: happened one night at a party. After nearly twenty years
Speaker 1: of sobriety, Demi hit a terrifying low at a birthday party.
Speaker 1: She took a puff of synthetic pot and nitrous oxide
Speaker 1: and everything went blurry. She overdosing. She yelled no because
Speaker 1: she knew what would come. The ambulance, the paparazzi, and
Speaker 1: then TMZ announcing to me more rushed to the hospital
Speaker 1: on drugs. I was there in the other room with
Speaker 1: nine one one panicking because I'm like, all right, either
Speaker 1: my mom's gonna die and I'm not going to be
Speaker 1: in the room and I'm going to feel the guilt
Speaker 1: of that for the rest of my life, or I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be there and see this image of my mom
Speaker 1: and that I will never get out of my head.
Speaker 1: So like what I do, and I'm gonna have to
Speaker 1: call my sisters in the morning and tell them that
Speaker 1: my mom died and They're never going to talk to
Speaker 1: her again. And I took her to rehab on the plane,
Speaker 1: which was the scariest thing I've ever had to do
Speaker 1: in my life. Do you refer to yourself as an addict.
Speaker 1: I fully identify as an addict alcoholic. I think my
Speaker 1: whole nature is really all or nothing. I have two
Speaker 1: speeds go and go faster, and I do not have
Speaker 1: an off switch. In January, I'll have eight years sober.
Speaker 1: But it's interesting, though, Like I never heard you use
Speaker 1: language like that necessarily, and so I remember even like
Speaker 1: having a lot of frustration towards you in the times,
Speaker 1: like you called going away to treatment camp. You know,
Speaker 1: like I had so much of this un dealt with
Speaker 1: anger that I hadn't let out because I didn't understand
Speaker 1: what was going on. And I think at the time
Speaker 1: I didn't have a healthy relationship with alcohol either. So
Speaker 1: when did when did your abuse start? When this stuff
Speaker 1: when I stopped talking to my mom, then it kind
Speaker 1: of kicked up into high gear and I literally started
Speaker 1: getting anxiety attacks about how bad I was going to
Speaker 1: feel the next day. So I would be drunk and
Speaker 1: be start like hyperventilating and and freak out and like
Speaker 1: made my friend called nine one one. I definitely think
Speaker 1: that my addiction lies more so in the like love
Speaker 1: addict codependency. How old were you when you had your
Speaker 1: first dream? I was six Wow really okay, wait wait
Speaker 1: wait wait Jamaican room. And then it was Johnny Walker.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I was were on family vacation. Uh fair.
Speaker 1: It was Champain like, it was very like, it was sweet.
Speaker 1: And then when I was fifteen, I guzzled vodka and
Speaker 1: I almost died from alcohol poisoning. And then I think
Speaker 1: when my mom began to really when things were very painful,
Speaker 1: that's when I began to drink heavily. Lula had lived
Speaker 1: with me for a little while and I was like,
Speaker 1: there are three wine bottles on the bedside table and
Speaker 1: like that. And then all of a sudden, my medicine
Speaker 1: was going missing, and so then I was like, I
Speaker 1: love you, you cannot stay with me anymore. So she
Speaker 1: got some like scary apartment, and then my dad relocated
Speaker 1: me to the hotel. He didn't really know what to
Speaker 1: do with me. To be honest, my dad didn't understand
Speaker 1: that once a child graduates from high school that you
Speaker 1: still have to take care of them. I honestly truly
Speaker 1: don't think he recalled that. So we're saying that every
Speaker 1: hotel and our little sister was about to be born. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you're talking about your dad, Bruce's baby. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: then Scout came in to tell me and I had
Speaker 1: taken a bunch of coding and I had done a
Speaker 1: bunch of cocaine that morning, and Scout couldn't wake me
Speaker 1: up and she was shaking me, and she called me
Speaker 1: and she's like, I can't wake till and so when
Speaker 1: I finally woke up, she was crying, and I made
Speaker 1: her feel horrible about it, and I was like, whatever,
Speaker 1: let me just go back to bed. And then I
Speaker 1: woke up a few hours later and I was just
Speaker 1: hysterically crying because it was like the first window of sobriety,
Speaker 1: of of you know, before you those tiny five minutes
Speaker 1: that you wake up before you start using again, and um,
Speaker 1: the feeling was like you just have death on your bones.
Speaker 1: I had no regard for my life. I had no care.
Speaker 1: So my dad got involved and he threatened. She sent
Speaker 1: me to a meetings as a punished, which didn't really
Speaker 1: make any sense. Scout and I basically had like an intervention,
Speaker 1: and I called Rumor and I said, you need to
Speaker 1: take me to Mom's house today. At this point, we
Speaker 1: were coming up on three years of not speaking. I
Speaker 1: started living with her that day. Yeah, and I went
Speaker 1: to treatment. Um my choice, my choice, I asked to
Speaker 1: go Wow, And when we did to Ulla's family week
Speaker 1: was the first time the five of our immediate family
Speaker 1: had been together. And I don't even know how long.
Speaker 1: It was intense. I don't know if you can relate
Speaker 1: to this, but growing up the way that we did,
Speaker 1: I felt that we weren't allowed to have pain because
Speaker 1: we had so much. When we first started talking to
Speaker 1: my mom again, she would always like, my perception was
Speaker 1: that it was like, you guys did this to me.
Speaker 1: You guys stopped talking to me. There were like the
Speaker 1: words that she would use, like the rug got pulled
Speaker 1: out from under me, and she would be like, I
Speaker 1: just could never understand what I did. That was so
Speaker 1: bad because I saw us playing the victim. Were listen,
Speaker 1: we're very good at that. Yeah, we're very good at
Speaker 1: playing the victim. Do you agree? I do. I played
Speaker 1: a lot of victim on the side too, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: not being willing to accept the damage that we have caused.
Speaker 1: And I get it, But what about how I felt
Speaker 1: all those time that I didn't want to tell you, Like,
Speaker 1: what about like there's this part of me that wants
Speaker 1: to be like I want to have an itemized list
Speaker 1: of all of the nights that I felt wronged or
Speaker 1: whatever it is, but also wanting to be validated for
Speaker 1: like how awful that was. Do you get that to me? Yeah? No, totally.
Speaker 1: And the thing is is I feel like I was
Speaker 1: actually like constantly trying to invite them to please I'm
Speaker 1: you know, and and I did a lot reaching out
Speaker 1: and no one responding. I didn't want to do it.
Speaker 1: There was just a fear of like, whenever we tried
Speaker 1: to bring something up to you, she's just going to
Speaker 1: find a way to like turn it into something that
Speaker 1: where she doesn't really have to take responsibility, but she's
Speaker 1: not not taking responsibility. I was defensive at feeling like
Speaker 1: they weren't really seeing me where I was. But in life,
Speaker 1: the reaction to something doesn't necessarily always happened in its
Speaker 1: real time. And I think what was occurring is that
Speaker 1: their reaction of what was coming was not about behavior
Speaker 1: that had been in that immediate past. It was from before.
Speaker 1: And what I was wrestling with was sitting there doing
Speaker 1: what I felt they had asked and being left. And
Speaker 1: I totally understand that, and I just know even with Willow.
Speaker 1: I've had to just to sit with Willow and have
Speaker 1: her reality and have her pain, let it burn, and
Speaker 1: have forgiveness for myself around it. And really, even if
Speaker 1: it wasn't what I meant to do, even if that
Speaker 1: wasn't my attention as a recovering addict, I understand that
Speaker 1: it's not a guarantee that people that you've hurt in
Speaker 1: your life, people who have been damaged by your behavior
Speaker 1: and your decisions, are going to remain in your life,
Speaker 1: you know. And I've always been so grateful that, um,
Speaker 1: you know, Jada never gave up on me, She never
Speaker 1: gave up on us, and she was always there. I
Speaker 1: wanted her to show and prove to me that I'm
Speaker 1: important enough for you to get sober. I want you
Speaker 1: to show me that being in my life is worth
Speaker 1: more than any drug, any man, like anything. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's the most human thing that you could possibly think,
Speaker 1: Like this is hurting you. I should be enough for
Speaker 1: you to not hurt yourself. She's holding this perception that Okay,
Speaker 1: you'll do this if you love me, and if you don't,
Speaker 1: you don't love me, which is a setup also to
Speaker 1: like know a and but you know at that time
Speaker 1: of being in so in it get desperate. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was desperate. I was like, I have to do something.
Speaker 1: There's no one that I can trust. I have no
Speaker 1: idea what's happening. It's been so bad, and it's like
Speaker 1: someone comes over to your house in the middle of
Speaker 1: the night and they break everything in your house, and
Speaker 1: the next morning it's like you don't get to talk
Speaker 1: about it. Yeah, it was like a pressure cooker because
Speaker 1: it had been seven eight years of silent suffering. I
Speaker 1: have a really hard time expressing anger. Or then I
Speaker 1: would be like I can handle it, I can do it,
Speaker 1: like it's fine, I'll just and then I always then
Speaker 1: take it on myself. I'll tell you this from personal experience.
Speaker 1: I've held onto so much anger and it has turned
Speaker 1: into so much rage. And the sneaky thing about rage
Speaker 1: and anger and how it becomes its own thing and
Speaker 1: you don't even you don't even recognize it until you
Speaker 1: look around you and you go, oh my god, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of score stirs around me, and it just pops,
Speaker 1: It just pops up right. And it's because it's just
Speaker 1: sitting there because it wants to be heard. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: You have to work yourself through that rageful little girl
Speaker 1: girl that is so angry of being neglected, not heard,
Speaker 1: not seen. No, you didn't say you love me enough.
Speaker 1: You didn't toss that joke out the house and look
Speaker 1: at me instead of him, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Totals bottles to the you know what I mean? I
Speaker 1: should have that's so really, but as mothers, you don't
Speaker 1: want to also burden, or you don't want to bring
Speaker 1: something that creates fear when there is none. It could
Speaker 1: really be just a weight that's just too much. I
Speaker 1: remember coming home from back to school party and all
Speaker 1: of these kids were like saying me things to me,
Speaker 1: and I'm crying and I get in the car, I'm
Speaker 1: like sobbing. My mom goes, what do you think that
Speaker 1: your partner? This was? And I was like, I'm going
Speaker 1: to kill you right now. I'm crying. These people are
Speaker 1: being mean, which they always like, give me because it
Speaker 1: was so bad, Mom, is it? I would say, it's so,
Speaker 1: I would say, I would can I finish? Really? So?
Speaker 1: I would say me. It was always like, it's you know,
Speaker 1: I can be upset, I can be angry. I can,
Speaker 1: but what's the point. I know, I'm just gonna have
Speaker 1: to get to this other place, so let's just get there.
Speaker 1: Willowhead a moment not too long ago when you had
Speaker 1: that upset and you were crying on the couch, and
Speaker 1: I just came to you and held you, and I
Speaker 1: said to myself, I said, I wish I had done
Speaker 1: this more with her, when you can just hold your
Speaker 1: little girl, have her tears, have her pain. Back in
Speaker 1: the day, like if I would be crying or have
Speaker 1: an upset, the energy was always like take that somewhere else,
Speaker 1: Like take that somewhere else, because I didn't want to
Speaker 1: be with my own feelings. I mean, I do think
Speaker 1: in your survival mechanism, that toughness, that's I'm so grateful
Speaker 1: that I had. But when it seems that you're not
Speaker 1: affected or that you handle things so well on the outside,
Speaker 1: I realized that I did a disservice by not letting
Speaker 1: them see me weak. I think we need to show
Speaker 1: the um not just our strength, but how we process
Speaker 1: to get through disappointment, upset, hurt. Yeah, and I would
Speaker 1: agree with you on that. I think that was the
Speaker 1: place that I got to of getting to a place
Speaker 1: of vulnerability where I could cry in front of will
Speaker 1: It took you a long time, a long time because
Speaker 1: of that forging. There's this wall, there's this armor, and
Speaker 1: I was thinking about how it does a disservice to
Speaker 1: everybody we love, including ourselves. Do you feel like you
Speaker 1: overcompensated for creating safety for them, rewanting to create a
Speaker 1: safe environment for them. I definitely overcompensated, And and I
Speaker 1: want to just take a moment and just say to
Speaker 1: you that I'm sorry you'll do that, you know, because
Speaker 1: you don't necessarily have because you want to create safety.
Speaker 1: Vulnerability is not safe exactly why not of person the
Speaker 1: way that we grew up, the way that my mother
Speaker 1: grew up. You feel like you have to be strong,
Speaker 1: and the first thing you want to do is teach
Speaker 1: you girls how to be strong because you didn't have
Speaker 1: a choice. We didn't have a choice, I mean, and
Speaker 1: that your baseline was like life or death exactly what
Speaker 1: that was our baseline, right, And so as we come
Speaker 1: into our healing, we come into our softness and our vulnerability.
Speaker 1: There was a time that her tears were so offensive
Speaker 1: to me, so offensive, which I was like, take that
Speaker 1: over there, we can't afford that here, not realizing bitch,
Speaker 1: you can afford it here. You're not in Baltimore anymore. Okay,
Speaker 1: you absolutely can't afford it here, right. But I have
Speaker 1: to confront the fact that I denied her that, and
Speaker 1: I have to confront the fact that I can give
Speaker 1: it to her now, and I can hurt you now,
Speaker 1: and remembering that their experience and their pain is no
Speaker 1: different because the circumstances were different. I know that when
Speaker 1: you care for your mom and her last months, that's
Speaker 1: when the healing for you really started to occur. I
Speaker 1: didn't go there even having an expectation of wanting something
Speaker 1: from her, but I just knew that that's where I
Speaker 1: was supposed to be. Demi did not speak to her
Speaker 1: mother for nearly a decade after she sold stories about
Speaker 1: her daughter and grandchildren to the tabloids. Demese teenage mom
Speaker 1: battled addiction and mental illness. During one of her many
Speaker 1: suicide attempts, to be used her small fingers to dig
Speaker 1: the pills out of her mother's mouth to save her life,
Speaker 1: but much of this pain and trauma to be kept
Speaker 1: from her daughters. When I distanced myself from my mother,
Speaker 1: it was completely justified. I was protecting my children from
Speaker 1: her behavior, but there was a point where I kind
Speaker 1: of decided who she was. And in that moment when
Speaker 1: I decided who she was, I realized that I limited
Speaker 1: her from ever becoming anything else, and that there was
Speaker 1: a part of my compassion and my humanity that had
Speaker 1: been lost. And how could I expect my daughters to
Speaker 1: have compassion and hold the humanity for me if I
Speaker 1: didn't recognize that from my mother. And the gift that
Speaker 1: was the most profound is in the moments right after
Speaker 1: she passed I was with her, and when I was
Speaker 1: able to really understand that she came into this world,
Speaker 1: like the innocence of her soul, came in wanting what
Speaker 1: we all want, wanting to be loved, wanting to matter,
Speaker 1: wanting to feel seen. And I was able to shift
Speaker 1: to even a deeper layer of compassion so that they
Speaker 1: could shift to me. And that's the stuff, and that's
Speaker 1: the piece that's been so profound. I really try to
Speaker 1: encourage people, no matter what they've gone through, to find
Speaker 1: that loving for their parents or partner, whatever it might be. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: how are you guys doing? Okay, it's tign the whole hand.
Speaker 1: This was such a powerful, powerful, powerful powerful and thank
Speaker 1: you for trusting us to tell this part of your story.
Speaker 1: It means so much and I'm wishing you guys just
Speaker 1: all in love and as you guys, He'll trust me,
Speaker 1: but doing it the work never it never ends. On
Speaker 1: the next Red Table Talk. An incredible story of survival.
Speaker 1: You have found outside and trash overcoming the odds. Kids
Speaker 1: kicked our ass every day and they were calling me
Speaker 1: a white crack of lover. And the lessons learned along
Speaker 1: the way. She was all ahead. An inspiring conversation with
Speaker 1: my good friend Tommy Davidson. And the loss is just
Speaker 1: as much mine as it is worth. So it's difficult.
Speaker 1: Hey r T T family. Join our Red Table Talk
Speaker 1: group on Facebook to become part of the conversation and
Speaker 1: be sure to follow the show page to catch up
Speaker 1: on all our episodes. What's up, guys, We are here
Speaker 1: with them and her two beautiful daughters were in too, Lula.
Speaker 1: Please swipe up and check out our beautiful conversations. Swipe up, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guys, did awesome. Did awesome. To join the Red
Speaker 1: Table Talk family and become a part of the conversation.
Speaker 1: Follow us at Facebook dot com slash red table Talk.
Speaker 1: Thanks we're listening to this episode of Red Table Talk podcast,
Speaker 1: produced by Facebook Watch, Westbrook Audio, and I Heart Radio.