Demi Moore and Her Daughters

Me and her daughters are here. Oh my goodness. To Me Moore is making headlines with her explosive new book, Inside Out, The number one New York Times bestseller, is filled with deeply personal accounts of her painful past, including being raped at fifteen by a man who paid her mother five dollars. Her deeply troubled mother was an alcoholic who attempted suicide when Demi was just a child. To Me struggled with her own addictions, but got sober and

didn't use for almost twenty years. After her divorce from Bruce Willis, to Me found love again with Ashton Kutcher, but she relapsed and eventually that marriage ended two Spinning out of control, Did Me hit a new loan and she was rushed to the hospital after taking drugs at a party. She found herself alone and estranged from her family. Did Me More and her daughter's come to the Red Table to talk about the pain passed down from parent to child. Welcome to me and Lula, thank you. This

is such a nice treat. Is I remember doing dinner with you and Will Bruce and I, Yes, at the ivy at the shore. You guys, I don't even think we're married. I don't know. I don't think you were married. Yes, And then we came to your house in Malibu. Remember. So what really hit me about your book. I was reading about your relationship with your mother, reading about your journey, and then your relationship with your girls, and me thinking

about my relationship with my mother. My mother's twenty eight years clean, Okay, congratulations, that's incredible, twenty eight years and then also thinking about Willow. One of the reasons for the Red Table and to have these generational conversations is to try to break some of the cycles. I've had a very codependent life, and I know that even today when Willow and I were having a conversation about some decisions as she was making, I was like, here is

the codependency and she got that from me. Well. One of the things is that I started to look at issues that say Rumor had with her self esteem, that didn't not reflect her environment, her insecurity, herself loathing, just the torture of feeling not good enough, which is exactly what I had been dealing with for my whole life.

She was carrying my the weight of my issue, and I understood where mine came from, but there was a agree of it that just didn't match from like super super little And another thing that I found really interesting, and it's something I know that you're working on. You know, you can tell your kids I love you, I love you so much every day, but if that's not reflected and how you feel about yourself as the mother, your kid is gonna pick up on that, you know, and

not be able to necessarily take in. Oh, I'm so amazing because my mom says I'm amazing. If my mom doesn't love herself, like, how how can I? How can I expect her to love her? What did you see in your mother that you felt was a reflection of

how you felt? Well, steel Um, A lot of the just like unworthiness, Like I'm innately unlovable somehow, no matter how I look, what I weigh, like how how my hair looks at whatever the outside reflection is, there's something innately about me that I have to earn love from people and like constantly proved myself that and a lot

of the stuff with men. What about you two, Lula, And I think that it's apologizing for being here, which is language that my mom had and I have used a lot of trying to figure out where we fit into the equation and how to find the tiny little hole to hide into, trying to be invisible, being small and being invisible and like I'm just gonna hold everything together and get through and white knuckle, white knucklet And in the book, she talks about I think one of

the first times she had sex and how she felt she needed to and how she felt like it was something expected of her, which is pretty much been my exact story, and that's not something that we talked about and shared. I felt like my mom made a choice to hold back certain things from like sharing about her past, and I think that always made me feel very far away from her and always made me feel like I

didn't know her very well. So like I knew she had a career, she met my dad, she had wropen New Mexico, but it was like that that was it. I don't believe in archaeological digs, emotional archae logical digs for just the purpose of digging. But I don't think

my mom was raised. She was forged, you know, like she was she was made, and the strength that comes from that it's intimidating and it's scary and it's and and I was growing up it was like I kind of feel that way about my It's like like towards in the firefly and the like you know, spark flying everywhere. I think we deified her. I think she was this larger than life being and she was. I mean, I'm completely obsessed with her, like I love her more than

a completely obsessed with my mom. What would you also say that you guys created a standard for me of of what you of your expectation that was also greater than what you would put on anybody else, like my like my room of my room for error was I will say, but I will say that, But also I think that that is a byproduct of im And I'm not saying this in a blaming way, but I think that that's also a byproduct of you not necessarily being

weak in front of U. Fine, they're totally fine. All then in your mind as a kid, You're like, she's always good. You know, I get that a hundred percent. You opened the book at a place that really hit me. I was now completely alone. I was almost fifty. The husband who I thought was the love of my life had cheated on me, then decided he didn't want to work on our marriage. My children weren't speaking to me. Their father, a friend I had counted on for years

was gone from my life. The career AT scrambled to create was stalled, or maybe it was over for good. Everything I was attached to, even my health, had abandoned me. I looked like I felt destroyed. Lord knows, I've been in places in my life where feeling alone end in and completely shattered. I had done so much work on myself, and to find myself in a worse place than I've ever been, it's like, how the did I get here? And so unraveling all the weight of my mother and

all of those things. But when you're hiding certain things that you are holding onto, a shame, and that's what it was. I had a depth of shame that I held onto that was really like life or death. So can you explain why you guys weren't talking to your mom for three years. What happened was 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've been still over my entire childhood. And then she drank, and then I just knew that I was scared um and that she was unsafe. And then there was sort of many years of saying she was sober and she wasn't and we couldn't trust it, and then all of the adults around us, in an effort to protect us, we're protecting her, and so if she wasn't sober, they would tell us she was, And so there was a complete lack of trusted Were you with Ashton then when she was nine years old? And ness when the re

lefts happened? Yes, how it broke down, like you know, I opened that door to drinking after almost twenty years, and you and Ashton were trying to have a baby. I ended up pregnant and then I lost the baby at almost six months, and so when I couldn't get pregnant again, the guilt that I felt that it was clearly my fault was just enormous. So we went on this trip and Ashton said, I don't know if alcoholisms

a thing. I think it's about moderation. And if I had stayed close to working my program, I of course, like I lived the majority of my adult life sober. I was great sober I had. I had no what if think that mental or emotional pull was to he wanted to be that girl? Yeah I was. I you know, I made my own story up that he wanted somebody that he could have wine with and do so he didn't. He's not the cause of why I opened that door.

I wanted to be something other than who I am, right and I and I it was literally like giving my power away. Right. So much of that time, especially with Ashton, I was so angry because I felt like something that was mine had been taken away. And I think also when she wanted to have another baby, it was like and then it wasn't happening, and then there was so much focus on that it was like, oh, well,

we're not enough. And part of the reason, like I moved out of the house was, um, I think after you had a miscarriage, I literally was just like, why are you so desperate to have another kid? And I couldn't stand the idea. But then I found these pictures and I was like, oh my god, I saw how bigger stomach was, and I was like, oh my god, Like I was so insensitive. I never once went to you and said I'm so sorry, like I'm are you okay?

And I understand, and you know what, I want you to know that even in your sensitivity, it's okay to

be angry. Yes, absolutely, you know, And that doesn't mean you don't love your mother, doesn't mean it wasn't just the addiction or or drinking again, the addiction in the codependency, like my addiction to Ashton, and that was probably almost more um devastating, because it it took me seriously away emotionally, you know, watching the behavior with Ashton those years, because everyone left the house and it was just me living there, and I felt very forgotten and I felt like I

developed and I nurtured a narrative that she didn't love me, um, and I truly believe did and I know that she does a hundred percent. But in that moment, you're hurt and you can't fathom that someone that loves you would do that to you and would choose others more than you Scout and Tula had very different experiences than I had when we stopped talking to my mom. They didn't

speak to her for three years. I went in and out as kind of like the ambassador for the family because at one point her friends are calling me and being like, I'm really worried about your mom, like you need to talk to her, and so then I'm like, Okay, well, like I have to go and fix this. And then my family basically kind of like shunned me and kind of called me a traitor for going to talk to her. And then I was like, then I'll have no one.

I'll have my mom who's not capable of like being my mom right now, and then the rest of my family is just not going to speak to me anymore. Right, What was it that was scary and unsafe for you in regards to your mother's re left. It was like the sun went down and like like like a monster

came out. Like I remember, there's just the anxiety that would come up in my body when I could sense like her eyes shedding a little bit more the way she was speaking, or she would be a lot more affectionate with me if she wasn't sober and I. It was starring and it was very weird, and there were moments where it would get angry, and I recall being very upset and kind of treating her like a child and speaking to her like a child and kind of being like, you know, please get away from me, and

you know she was. She got very angry, and it would happen in front of friends, and it was it was not the mom that we had up. My mom held everything together. You had always chosen us, You would always put us first and made that a priority. Came to Idaho, like stopped working. Like being around a woman as your mother, who is this like infallible woman who

can take on anything, even my dad? Like all of these fold that are you know that it's in control always like always together, always in control, not be in control around a man like who is this person? I don't know who this is? And I feel like they're supposed to be my my rock. They are supposed to be the one who is like and especially it's even more I think exaggerated or exacerbated because your baseline was so the opposite. Yeah, you know, it's not like this

was what they knew, completely different. That's that's what I'm that's what I'm hearing. Dem says that her rock bottom happened one night at a party. After nearly twenty years of sobriety, Demi hit a terrifying low at a birthday party. She took a puff of synthetic pot and nitrous oxide and everything went blurry. She overdosing. She yelled no because she knew what would come. The ambulance, the paparazzi, and then TMZ announcing to me more rushed to the hospital

on drugs. I was there in the other room with nine one one panicking because I'm like, all right, either my mom's gonna die and I'm not going to be in the room and I'm going to feel the guilt of that for the rest of my life, or I'm gonna be there and see this image of my mom and that I will never get out of my head. So like what I do, and I'm gonna have to call my sisters in the morning and tell them that my mom died and They're never going to talk to

her again. And I took her to rehab on the plane, which was the scariest thing I've ever had to do in my life. Do you refer to yourself as an addict. I fully identify as an addict alcoholic. I think my whole nature is really all or nothing. I have two speeds go and go faster, and I do not have an off switch. In January, I'll have eight years sober.

But it's interesting, though, Like I never heard you use language like that necessarily, and so I remember even like having a lot of frustration towards you in the times, like you called going away to treatment camp. You know, like I had so much of this un dealt with anger that I hadn't let out because I didn't understand what was going on. And I think at the time I didn't have a healthy relationship with alcohol either. So

when did when did your abuse start? When this stuff when I stopped talking to my mom, then it kind of kicked up into high gear and I literally started getting anxiety attacks about how bad I was going to feel the next day. So I would be drunk and be start like hyperventilating and and freak out and like made my friend called nine one one. I definitely think that my addiction lies more so in the like love addict codependency. How old were you when you had your

first dream? I was six Wow really okay, wait wait wait wait Jamaican room. And then it was Johnny Walker. Oh yeah, I was were on family vacation. Uh fair. It was Champain like, it was very like, it was sweet. And then when I was fifteen, I guzzled vodka and I almost died from alcohol poisoning. And then I think when my mom began to really when things were very painful,

that's when I began to drink heavily. Lula had lived with me for a little while and I was like, there are three wine bottles on the bedside table and like that. And then all of a sudden, my medicine was going missing, and so then I was like, I love you, you cannot stay with me anymore. So she got some like scary apartment, and then my dad relocated me to the hotel. He didn't really know what to

do with me. To be honest, my dad didn't understand that once a child graduates from high school that you still have to take care of them. I honestly truly don't think he recalled that. So we're saying that every hotel and our little sister was about to be born. Okay,

so you're talking about your dad, Bruce's baby. Yeah, And then Scout came in to tell me and I had taken a bunch of coding and I had done a bunch of cocaine that morning, and Scout couldn't wake me up and she was shaking me, and she called me and she's like, I can't wake till and so when I finally woke up, she was crying, and I made her feel horrible about it, and I was like, whatever,

let me just go back to bed. And then I woke up a few hours later and I was just hysterically crying because it was like the first window of sobriety, of of you know, before you those tiny five minutes that you wake up before you start using again, and um, the feeling was like you just have death on your bones. I had no regard for my life. I had no care. So my dad got involved and he threatened. She sent me to a meetings as a punished, which didn't really

make any sense. Scout and I basically had like an intervention, and I called Rumor and I said, you need to take me to Mom's house today. At this point, we were coming up on three years of not speaking. I started living with her that day. Yeah, and I went to treatment. Um my choice, my choice, I asked to go Wow, And when we did to Ulla's family week was the first time the five of our immediate family had been together. And I don't even know how long.

It was intense. I don't know if you can relate to this, but growing up the way that we did, I felt that we weren't allowed to have pain because we had so much. When we first started talking to my mom again, she would always like, my perception was that it was like, you guys did this to me. You guys stopped talking to me. There were like the words that she would use, like the rug got pulled out from under me, and she would be like, I just could never understand what I did. That was so

bad because I saw us playing the victim. Were listen, we're very good at that. Yeah, we're very good at playing the victim. Do you agree? I do. I played a lot of victim on the side too, Yeah, and not being willing to accept the damage that we have caused.

And I get it, But what about how I felt all those time that I didn't want to tell you, Like, what about like there's this part of me that wants to be like I want to have an itemized list of all of the nights that I felt wronged or whatever it is, but also wanting to be validated for like how awful that was. Do you get that to me? Yeah? No, totally. And the thing is is I feel like I was actually like constantly trying to invite them to please I'm you know, and and I did a lot reaching out

and no one responding. I didn't want to do it. There was just a fear of like, whenever we tried to bring something up to you, she's just going to find a way to like turn it into something that where she doesn't really have to take responsibility, but she's not not taking responsibility. I was defensive at feeling like they weren't really seeing me where I was. But in life, the reaction to something doesn't necessarily always happened in its

real time. And I think what was occurring is that their reaction of what was coming was not about behavior that had been in that immediate past. It was from before. And what I was wrestling with was sitting there doing what I felt they had asked and being left. And I totally understand that, and I just know even with Willow. I've had to just to sit with Willow and have her reality and have her pain, let it burn, and

have forgiveness for myself around it. And really, even if it wasn't what I meant to do, even if that wasn't my attention as a recovering addict, I understand that it's not a guarantee that people that you've hurt in your life, people who have been damaged by your behavior and your decisions, are going to remain in your life, you know. And I've always been so grateful that, um, you know, Jada never gave up on me, She never

gave up on us, and she was always there. I wanted her 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, any man, like anything. Yeah, and that's the most human thing that you could possibly think, Like this is hurting you. I should be enough for

you to not hurt yourself. She's holding this perception that Okay, you'll do this if you love me, and if you don't, you don't love me, which is a setup also to like know a and but you know at that time of being in so in it get desperate. Yeah, I was desperate. I was like, I have to do something. There's no one that I can trust. I have no

idea what's happening. It's been so bad, and it's like someone comes over to your house in the middle of the night and they break everything in your house, and the next morning it's like you don't get to talk about it. Yeah, it was like a pressure cooker because it had been seven eight years of silent suffering. I have a really hard time expressing anger. Or then I would be like I can handle it, I can do it, like it's fine, I'll just and then I always then

take it on myself. I'll tell you this from personal experience. I've held onto so much anger and it has turned into so much rage. And the sneaky thing about rage and anger and how it becomes its own thing and you don't even you don't even recognize it until you look around you and you go, oh my god, there's a lot of score stirs around me, and it just pops, It just pops up right. And it's because it's just sitting there because it wants to be heard. Yeah, exactly.

You have to work yourself through that rageful little girl girl that is so angry of being neglected, not heard, not seen. No, you didn't say you love me enough. You didn't toss that joke out the house and look at me instead of him, you know what I mean? Totals bottles to the you know what I mean? I should have that's so really, but as mothers, you don't want to also burden, or you don't want to bring something that creates fear when there is none. It could

really be just a weight that's just too much. I remember coming home from back to school party and all of these kids were like saying me things to me, and I'm crying and I get in the car, I'm like sobbing. My mom goes, what do you think that your partner? This was? And I was like, I'm going to kill you right now. I'm crying. These people are being mean, which they always like, give me because it was so bad, Mom, is it? I would say, it's so, I would say, I would can I finish? Really? So?

I would say me. It was always like, it's you know, I can be upset, I can be angry. I can, but what's the point. I know, I'm just gonna have to get to this other place, so let's just get there. Willowhead a moment not too long ago when you had that upset and you were crying on the couch, and I just came to you and held you, and I said to myself, I said, I wish I had done this more with her, when you can just hold your

little girl, have her tears, have her pain. Back in the day, like if I would be crying or have an upset, the energy was always like take that somewhere else, Like take that somewhere else, because I didn't want to be with my own feelings. I mean, I do think in your survival mechanism, that toughness, that's I'm so grateful that I had. But when it seems that you're not affected or that you handle things so well on the outside, I realized that I did a disservice by not letting

them see me weak. I think we need to show the um not just our strength, but how we process to get through disappointment, upset, hurt. Yeah, and I would agree with you on that. I think that was the place that I got to of getting to a place of vulnerability where I could cry in front of will It took you a long time, a long time because of that forging. There's this wall, there's this armor, and I was thinking about how it does a disservice to

everybody we love, including ourselves. Do you feel like you overcompensated for creating safety for them, rewanting to create a safe environment for them. I definitely overcompensated, And and I want to just take a moment and just say to you that I'm sorry you'll do that, you know, because you don't necessarily have because you want to create safety. Vulnerability is not safe exactly why not of person the way that we grew up, the way that my mother

grew up. You feel like you have to be strong, and the first thing you want to do is teach you girls how to be strong because you didn't have a choice. We didn't have a choice, I mean, and that your baseline was like life or death exactly what that was our baseline, right, And so as we come into our healing, we come into our softness and our vulnerability.

There was a time that her tears were so offensive to me, so offensive, which I was like, take that over there, we can't afford that here, not realizing bitch, you can afford it here. You're not in Baltimore anymore. Okay, you absolutely can't afford it here, right. But I have to confront the fact that I denied her that, and I have to confront the fact that I can give it to her now, and I can hurt you now, and remembering that their experience and their pain is no

different because the circumstances were different. I know that when you care for your mom and her last months, that's when the healing for you really started to occur. I didn't go there even having an expectation of wanting something from her, but I just knew that that's where I was supposed to be. Demi did not speak to her mother for nearly a decade after she sold stories about her daughter and grandchildren to the tabloids. Demese teenage mom

battled addiction and mental illness. During one of her many suicide attempts, to be used her small fingers to dig the pills out of her mother's mouth to save her life, but much of this pain and trauma to be kept from her daughters. When I distanced myself from my mother, it was completely justified. I was protecting my children from her behavior, but there was a point where I kind

of decided who she was. And in that moment when I decided who she was, I realized that I limited her from ever becoming anything else, and that there was a part of my compassion and my humanity that had been lost. And how could I expect my daughters to have compassion and hold the humanity for me if I

didn't recognize that from my mother. And the gift that was the most profound is in the moments right after she passed I was with her, and when I was able to really understand that she came into this world, like the innocence of her soul, came in wanting what we all want, wanting to be loved, wanting to matter, wanting to feel seen. And I was able to shift to even a deeper layer of compassion so that they could shift to me. And that's the stuff, and that's

the piece that's been so profound. I really try to encourage people, no matter what they've gone through, to find that loving for their parents or partner, whatever it might be. Yeah, okay, how are you guys doing? Okay, it's tign the whole hand. This was such a powerful, powerful, powerful powerful and thank you for trusting us to tell this part of your story. It means so much and I'm wishing you guys just all in love and as you guys, He'll trust me, but doing it the work never it never ends. On

the next Red Table Talk. An incredible story of survival. You have found outside and trash overcoming the odds. Kids kicked our ass every day and they were calling me a white crack of lover. And the lessons learned along the way. She was all ahead. An inspiring conversation with my good friend Tommy Davidson. And the loss is just as much mine as it is worth. So it's difficult.

Hey r T T family. Join our Red Table Talk group on Facebook to become part of the conversation and be sure to follow the show page to catch up on all our episodes. What's up, guys, We are here with them and her two beautiful daughters were in too, Lula. Please swipe up and check out our beautiful conversations. Swipe up, Yeah, I guys, did awesome. Did awesome. To join the Red Table Talk family and become a part of the conversation. Follow us at Facebook dot com slash red table Talk.

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