This post deals with issues including miscarriage and substance abuse and might be triggering for some readers.
Demi Moore and Bruce Willis‘ youngest daughter Tallulah has opened up about being estranged from her mother for three years.
In a post for Mother’s Day, Tallulah shared: “I didn’t talk to my mom for almost 3 years and during that shattered time this day [Mother’s Day] would transport me from fragmented pieces to absolute dust.
“I remember tearing up driving to work upon hearing a radio ad that cheerily recommend which ‘perfume Mom would absolutely adore’. I digested the entire celebratory nature of the day as an insensitive slight to MY pain and MY story,” she wrote, alongside a recent photo of her and her mother.
“However, my story changed. Through a metamorphosis of inward self reflection and a malleability to forgive, 3 years did not stretch to forever. The gratitude of that truth has never lost its potency. I am magnetically transfixed by my mother, if you know me personally you know the magnitude of her presence in my life.”
It’s not the first time the now 26-year-old has spoken so openly about being estranged from her mum.
Appearing on Jada Pinkett Smith’s Red Table Talk in November last year, Tallulah spoke about how her mum’s addictions adversely impacted her, and how it led to their temporary estrangement.
“I felt like my mum made a choice to hold back certain things from, like, sharing about her past,” she revealed. “And I think that it always made me feel very far away from her, and it always made me feel like I didn’t know her very well.”
Tallulah was living with her mother when Demi – who unbeknownst to her daughters had previously suffered from alcohol and drug abuse – began drinking again.
“She relapsed when I was nine and no one in our family spoke about it and I had no idea what was going on, she had been sober my entire childhood,” Tallulah reflected. “And then she drank and then I just knew that I was scared and she wasn’t safe. There was many years of saying she was sober, when she wasn’t and we couldn’t trust it.”
Moore had been sober for nearly 20 years when she relapsed in her 40s after enduring a miscarriage at around six months, during her marriage to actor Ashton Kutcher.
"My addiction to Ashton... was probably almost more devastating because it took me seriously away, emotionally," Demi Moore said as she sat next to two of her daughters, Tallulah and Rumer, in the interview. Moore and Kutcher separated in November 2011, amid the allegations that he had cheated on her.
"Watching the behaviour with Ashton, those years, everyone left the house and it was just me living there," Tallulah continued. "I felt very forgotten. I developed and I nurtured a narrative that she didn't love me and I truly believed it.
"I know that she does, 100 per cent, but in that moment, you're hurt. And you can't fathom that someone who loves you would do that to you and would choose others, more than you."
Demi Moore says she experienced a rock bottom in 2012, when she suffered a seizure after smoking synthetic cannabis and inhaling nitrous oxide while partying with her eldest daughter, Rumer Willis, in 2012 - an incident that tested her already strained relationship with her daughters.
Tallulah added that she went on to suffer her own experiences of addiction, saying she began drinking at the age of 14, and almost died of alcohol poisoning when she was a teenager after she "guzzled" vodka.
"When things were very painful [with my mum], that's when I began to drink heavily," Tallulah shared.
Rumer Willis also suffered a fractured relationship with her mother, and explained that when they reconciled, she needed her mother "to show and prove to me, that I'm important enough for you to get sober."
"I want you to show me that being in my life is worth more than any drug, and any man," she remembers telling her mum, as she explained on Red Table Talk.
Bruce and Demi's third daughter, Scout Willis, also stopped talking to her mother for three years, and on Mother's Day this year, similarly reflected on how their relationship has recovered since.
"I love this woman so much," Scout began.
"Today I am filled with so much gratitude for all of the stunning ups, growth provoking downs and incredibly hard work that has gone into the relationship I have with my mom today."
"Our communication, closeness and safety with one another is a tribute to that work, and everything that has happened FOR us and not TO us to foster this closeness."
Rumer told The New York Times in 2019: "We grow up thinking that our parents are these immovable gods of Olympus. Obviously, as we grow older, we start to realise how much our parents are just people."
Read more:
- Demi Moore and Bruce Willis' divorce shook Hollywood. 20 years on, they're isolating together.
- Miscarriage, addiction, and a "do over": Inside Demi Moore's relationship with Ashton Kutcher.
If this post brings up any issues for you, or if you just feel like you need to speak to someone, please call 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) – the national sexual assault, domestic and family violence counselling service. It doesn’t matter where you live, they will take your call and, if need be, refer you to a service closer to home.
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