Jada Pinkett Smith and Demi Moore brought their shared experience with addiction and substance abuse to a recent episode of Pinkett-Smith’s Facebook Watch show Red Table Talk.
“She’s a child of an addiction, so am I,” said Pinkett-Smith.
“Then we both battled with our issues of code pendency and issues with addiction and now being parents, being mothers, having to look at how our behaviour has affected our children, right? And so, it just validated the necessity for patience in the process of healing. And it’s on-going, it never really stops,” she added.
Pinkett-Smith and her mother, Adrienne Banfield Jones and daughter Willow Smith sat across from Moore’s daughters Rumer Willis and Tallulah Willis to talk about the actresses’ intimate memoir, “Inside Out.” In the book Moore shares details about her childhood, failed marriages and drug abuse.
In 2012 Moore suffered convulsions and seemed only semi-conscious after smoking an undisclosed substance before being rushed to hospital. Moore says she has now been sober for eight years.
For Pinkett-Smith the episode was a chance to talk about traumas passed from parent to child.
“Battles with trust and not really being able to really know how to communicate and how to have those difficult conversations to express either what you’ve been through with a parent. You know what I’m saying? And even as a parent, being able to listen and hear it, you know, and what to do about it, right. So, I feel like every family has complex dynamics. It just so happens that this particular episode the dynamic, is around addiction, which both families, my family and her family have, you know, have suffered from.”
During the taping Pinkett-Smith said a deep healing moment with Willow happened while listening to Tallulah and Rumer’s story.
“Just some of the experiences that they had, it just made me realize some behaviours that I had during Willow’s childhood that I needed to apologize for. You know, so, what I think I learned, what I’m continuously trying to learn is just how to listen.”
The Emmy nominated show is in its second season.
