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Demi Moore was ready to be seen.
This week, the longtime actress’ deeply personal memoir, Inside Out, reached its release date, sparking headlines for the intimate details she shared about her childhood, her high-profile marriages, her downward spiral and beyond.
During an appearance on The Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon wondered how deep she had wanted to go on the page. “To do this and have it be something that’s about like fluffy promoting yourself, all the things that are good, then you’re missing the opportunity. I think a memoir is not about receiving—it’s about giving and unless you’re really willing to go on a journey of exploration of yourself and share of yourself, then there really isn’t any point in doing it.”
For Moore, the project centered on some essential questions.
“‘How did I get here? Where I came from, what my life was—how have I had the life that I’ve had?'” she wondered. “And then I hit a very hard time in my personal life and it was like, ‘How the f did I get here?'”
The star said the book starts “at a real low point in reality, which is a realization of great loss in so many ways of my life and so the journey is really exploring love and loss and about self-acceptance and self-forgiveness and ultimately self-love.”
Before she could write about it, Moore had to self-explore and heal first.
“I had a very unusual and challenging childhood and it left me in a life that was running,” she told Fallon. “I felt like I had done a lot, but I hadn’t experienced very much and that’s because I was always just trying to keep going and prove that it was ok that I was here, that it was worth me being born and there’s no way that you can stop and be present and really experience life when you’re running in a way that’s a fear…even though my outsides didn’t necessarily convey it, because I didn’t want that to be seen.”
Ultimately, with the book, she was “able to put that down and stop feeling like I had to protect myself or hide who I really am and be able to let myself be seen.”
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