Photo: Gonzalo Marroquin/Getty for MACRO
Sheryl Lee Ralphisn’t afraid to seek out help when she needs it.
TheAbbott Elementarystar, 66, recently opened up about a harrowing period in 2013 when her sonEtienne, 31, was mugged and stabbed after being involved ina brain-damaging car accident.
With the scary moment now 10 years behind them, Ralph is getting candid about how she was able to push past that troubling time — and the important role her daughter Ivy-Victoria, now 28, played at the time.
“My daughter said to me, ‘Mommy, you need therapy because you have been traumatized,’” she told PEOPLE while attending Project Angel Food’s “Rise to the Challenge” ceremony on Thursday. “And I was like, ‘No, I haven’t.’ And she said, ‘See? You’re the kind of person that really needs it.’ The more you deny it the more you need it. And I was just like, ‘Wow.’”
The actress revealed that her experiences as a “child of integration” had made her adverse to seeking out help from others. She also explained how she was “set up” to take on her problems with “slings and arrows.”
Etienne Maurice and Sheryl Lee Ralph.emma McIntyre/Getty
emma McIntyre/Getty
Last month, Ralph revealed she hadphysically broken downwhen she learned of Etienne’s injuries in a cover story forAARP Magazine’s August/September issue.
“When Etienne was in college, he had a car accident and suffered a concussion. It changed his whole brain,” she explained. “Then he got mugged, and they shot him three times. He woke up in the hospital with two bullets in his leg and a wound in his forehead where a bullet had grazed him.”
When Ralph heard that her son had been shot, she “collapsed and dropped the phone.”
“I didn’t even listen to the rest. But they didn’t kill him, thank God,” the Emmy winner said. “Now he runs his own production company and nonprofit, WalkGoodLA."
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In her cover story forAARP, the actress said she always “knew I was going to be somebody’s mother," calling her children “my greatest gift.”
source: people.com
