Ricki Lake showed off her first tattoo during a stop on Good Morning Britain Wednesday and shared the heartbreaking meaning behind it. The ink on her left forearm is a tribute to her late ex-husband, Christian Evans. Evans died in 2017 from suicide and struggled with bipolar disorder.
“My beloved husband passed away from suicide and bipolar five and a half years ago,” Lake told the GMB hosts, reports Entertainment Tonight. “So this was his wedding vow to me that I found on the stationary after he died and it says, ‘I vow to continue loving you.’”
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Lake and Evans were married from 2012 to 2015. She has two sons with her first husband, Rob Sussman, to whom she was married from 1993 to 2004. Lake, 54, married Ross Burningham in January.
The former daytime talk show host said the new tattoo was also a message to herself. “It’s not only a message from [Evans], but it’s a message to continue loving myself,” Lake explained. “That relationship and that loss was definitely the darkest period of my life, but through it, so many gifts have come out of it. I’m now remarried and I’m very much in the happiest place I’ve ever been in my life.”
Lake also discussed loving someone who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. She said she did not understand what it meant until she met him. “He told me when we met that he was diagnosed bipolar, and I was like, ‘Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, we all have our stuff. I’m a control freak, I know,’” Lake recalled. “I didn’t understand what a manic episode, what a psychotic break was until years later and it was the darkest days of my life, but I learned so much.”
In an interview with Entertainment Tonight last month, Lake said she was finally beginning to accept herself and love herself in the way Evans loved her. Lake, who won an Emmy in 2013 for The Ricki Lake Show, said the darkest periods of her life inspired her to be more open with her fans and herself, like in 2020 when she revealed she was suffering from hair loss.
“I mean, losing my partner, my husband Christian, now five and a half years ago. I mean, that was the darkest time for me,” Lake told ET in September. “And I got so much strength from sharing my journey and my story from people who had gone through it. So it’s not a conscious thing. I have to be exactly who I am. I’ve gotten through it. I’ve really come a long way from where I’ve been. And honestly, I’ve never been more content or happy in my life.”
“I think losing Christian to bipolar and suicide and going through that loss, like the way he loved me and losing him, I now love myself the way he loved me,” the Hairspray star added. “It’s like I’ve come to this place of self-acceptance and self-love through that relationship and losing him.”
If you or someone you know is in crisis, please call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. The previous Lifeline phone number (1-800-273-8255) will always remain available.
