Demi Moore Reveals She Blamed Herself For Heartbreaking Miscarriage At 42 With Ashton Kutcher

View gallery

Demi Moore‘s marriage to Ashton Kutcher, 15 years younger, was tabloid fodder before and after their 2013 divorce. Constantly chased by paparazzi who documented every minute detail of her relationship,  it was hard to get some privacy. But Demi managed to keep one important event to herself and away from the prying eyes of the public, she said in Harper’s Bazaar’s October 2019 issue. The actress, now 56, had a miscarriage when she was 42 years old, shortly after she and Ashton started dating. “As a woman, a mother, and a wife, there are certain values and vows that I hold sacred, and it is in this spirit that I have chosen to move forward with my life,” she told the magazine while discussing the miscarriage. She lost the baby when she was six months pregnant.  Demi later revealed to The New York Times in an interview about her upcoming memoir, Inside Out, that she and Ashton intended to name their daughter Chaplin Ray.

Shortly after her miscarriage, she started drinking again after giving up alcohol and drugs in her 20s. She blamed herself for the loss. Demi and Ashton secretly tried to get pregnant again after their 2005 marriage. But her drinking became out of control, and she started abusing Vicodin before learning that Ashton cheated on her. It got worse. While out with her daughter, Rumer Willis, in 2012, Demi had a seizure after smoking synthetic cannabis and inhaling nitrous oxide. Her addictions alienated Rumer and her other two daughters with ex-husband Bruce Willis, Scout and Tallulah, according to The New York Times. She was able to achieve sobriety again as she neared 50.

“In retrospect, what I realized is that when I opened the door [again], it was just giving my power away,” she told Harper’s. “I guess I would think of it like this: It was really important to me to have natural childbirth because I didn’t want to miss a moment. And with that I experienced pain. So part of being sober is, I don’t want to miss a moment of life, of that texture, even if that means being in some pain.”

Being able to revive her relationship with her daughters was a blessing to Demi, who wanted to provide them a better childhood than she ever had. “My daughters offered me an opportunity to start to change the generational pattern. To be able to break the cycles,” the Ghost star shared, adding that motherhood was her life’s goal, as well as “mothering myself.” Demi had a tumultuous childhood that she never wanted her girls to ever experience. She described a “nomadic” life in her Harper’s interview, and traumatizing events like witnessing her mother attempt suicide by overdose.

“The next thing I remember is using my fingers, the small fingers of a child, to dig the pills my mother had tried to swallow out of her mouth while my father held it open and told me what to do,” she said. “Something very deep inside me shifted then, and it never shifted back. My childhood was over.”

The October issue of Harper’s Bazaar, featuring Demi nude on the cover, hits newsstands on September 24.