14 DAY TRIAL // Before she’s Halle Berry, one of the most beautiful and appreciated women in Hollywood, the star is “little Halle” first, she says in a recent interview with CNN. And little Halle is still healing from her traumatic childhood.
Though she rarely speaks about this, Halle grew up in a broken home, witnessing her mother being abused by her father. She’s now doing for other women what she couldn’t do for her mom.
For the CNN series “Big Stars, Big Giving,” Halle talks about her work with the Jenesse Center in Los Angeles, a shelter for abused women who are trying to break free from their abusive spouses.
Not only does she volunteer for the center, but she also comes in person to meet these women, being able to offer them more than just a few empty words, because she too was once a victim of abuse.
“I think I’ve spent my adult life dealing with the sense of low self-esteem that sort of implanted in me,” the actress says in the CNN special.
She knows the kind of damage this type of childhood can inflict on one and she wants to make sure other children are sheltered from it, in a way she wasn’t.
“Somehow I felt not worthy,” she says of the effects her father’s abusive behavior had on her. At the end of the day, she’s not this glamorous A-lister, she’s just another victim of abuse.
“Before I’m ‘Halle Berry,’ I’m little Halle... a little girl growing in this environment that damaged me... I’ve spent my adult life trying to really heal from that,” she explains.
To help other women in the same situation as her mother, she volunteers for the shelter and, whenever she has the time, works on renovating apartments that can later be rented out to women looking for a place to call their own, away from abusive husbands.
“I have a spot in my soul that understands the devastation that this causes a family,” she says. Below is the video of Halle speaking about the Jenesse Center and the abuse that marked her adult life.