Literally 365 days ago Halle Berry was interviewing with outlets hoping her domestic violence story would help promote support for a then financially strapped shelter for battered women. A year later Halle is still advocating for the shelter, still volunteering there, and still sharing her story to promote why these shelters are a safe alternative place for women to flee whenever they need help.
In an interview with CNN, Halle opened up about why volunteering at the Jenesse Center in Los Angeles is an important part of her life.
"Honestly, I think I've spent my adult life dealing with the sense of low self-esteem that that sort of implanted in me," Berry said. "Somehow I felt not worthy.
"I have a spot in my soul that understands the devastation that this causes a family and how hard it is to rebuild your self-esteem when you've suffered," she said.
Berry helps renovate run-down apartments so women who flee their abusive partners can have a safe, inviting place to live.
Here at the Jenesse Center, women can "feel rejuvenated ... hugged and loved," Berry said. And they can see what life can be like so they can dream of a better future.
"I come here sometimes and I play with the kids. I see the children and so I'm just regular old crackers to them," she said with a laugh. "And I love being regular old crackers, I have to say."
To hear Halle, arguably one of the most beautiful women in the entertainment business, open up about her low self-esteem is hard to hear, but she admits it stems from witnessing it as a child.
"Before I'm Halle Berry, I'm little Halle, who was a little girl growing in this environment that damaged me in some ways. And I've spent my adult life trying to really heal from that."
In 2009, Halle explained in depth to The Sun Times how watching her mother, Judith, a retired nurse who was born in Liverpool, was violently abused by her father Jerome Jesse Berry when she was 4-year-old "little Halle" living in Cleveland, Ohio:
“I saw my mother battered, and could not do anything to stop it,” she said. “My father was tyrannical, lashing out at her for no reason. I felt the effects that had on our family — I’ve experienced what these women have gone through.”
She said her mother was still working out why she took it for so many years. “That is a deep question, and I am not sure she will ever come up with one answer. I have one answer to anyone in a similar situation — get out.”
Berry never forgave her father, a hospital porter, even as he lay dying with Parkinson’s disease in 2003. He sold his account of their estrangement to a tabloid “for a pack of beer and cigarettes,” Berry said.
She wondered if her parents’ relationship had affected her past romances.
She said: “I never had to run to a shelter, but I did choose the wrong partners. Not always good men. Luckily, in recent years, I have been smart enough to hit the door when violence even becomes a possibility. That is something I will not tolerate.”
Now that Halle’s a mother, I’m sure these matters are even more important to her and the livelihood of her daughter Nilah.
