Watching youngest daughter Amelia struggle with anorexia had Lisa Rinna and husband Harry Hamlin feeling “totally helpless.”
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star opened up about her family’s experience with her 17-year-old’s eating disorder during an emotional conversation in Tuesday’s episode of the Bravo show.
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“A year ago, we found out that something was going on with Amelia,” Rinna told the camera. “You could see it. My response to it at first was, ‘You gotta eat!’ Of course it scared the s— out of me; I know it scared the s— out of Harry; I know it scared the s— out of [older sister Delilah]!”
“It’s a very scary thing when your child is suffering,” she continued. “You feel totally helpless.”
The model explained that when she was in the darkest parts of her illness, for which she has since sought treatment, “No matter how many deaths anorexia causes, no matter how much blindness, how much hair loss, all I cared about was skinniness.”
Revealing what she had been going through in a public Instagram announcement in April 2018, Amelia explained she hoped she could shed light on the realities of eating disorders and the entertainment industry.
“I hope people in the entertainment industry can stop putting up this facade of being perfect, because we all have so much s—,” she told her mom, adding, “It’s hard and I don’t want what happened to me to happen to other people. I could have died.”
“I’m not out of it, and I’m never gonna be out of it,” she clarified.
Rinna said when she watched her daughter come out about her eating disorder publicly, she was “shocked” and “beyond proud” to see her be vulnerable on such a large scale. The reality star explained that while she had never dealt with anorexia, she had certainly been “aware” of her weight during her work as an actress.
“To watch my young girls go into that business and see some brutalities in that business that I’ve now seen, I don’t want that to be the only thing that my girls focus on,” she told the camera. “I think Harry and I have shown them there’s more out there.”
In April 2018, Amelia, then 16, shared a photo of herself at the time and while at the height of her eating disorder on social media, writing, “Anyways, last year at this time there was no doubt that I was not okay. Not only physically but also mentally. I feel like sometimes people forget that just because your job involves being in front of the camera, doesn’t mean you can’t have bad days. We’re human. All of us.”
“One in 200 women in the US suffer from anorexia. And I want to help,” she continued. “The first photo, taken today is not a photo of the perfect girl. That is a photo of me, trying to figure out my body, and owing my curves that I naturally have, and not forcing myself to starve them away. I have a lot of health complications after starving myself for so long so it’s going to be a journey that I go through for a large part of my life.”
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET on Bravo.
Photo credit: Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images for Rachel Zoe Inc
