Bellamy Young is healing the trauma of her past regarding her late father’s battle with cirrhosis.
The Scandal star opened up to People about how her family simply ‘didn’t talk about’ how her father’s struggle with alcoholism, which ultimately resulted in the cirrhosis diagnosis.
‘There was always a lot of social drinking but I knew my dad did it at home by himself, too,’ the 53-year-old actress admitted, adding that her dad was a ‘drinker.’
She added that at the time, it simply wasn’t socially acceptable to talk about issues like alcoholism.
‘There wasn’t a dialogue about alcoholism or anything like that. We just sort of kept it in a box and didn’t talk about it,’ she explained.
Healing girl era: Bellamy Young, 53, opened up about how she coped with her late father’s cirrhosis battle during a new interview with People; seen this month
The way they were: The Scandal star admitted that her family tried to maintain a facade of perfection even when her father was struggling with alcoholism and cirrhosis
Struggling to cope with the feelings of ‘isolation,’ the brunette beauty recounted how ‘everybody’s trying to be the perfect family — there is no perfect family — so we didn’t talk about it with anybody.’
Assuming that the cirrhosis diagnosis was just a ‘a bump in the road,’ her family kept quiet — until they noticed that her father was acting differently.
‘He started to change. His demeanor would be more frustrated, more angry,’ the Prodigal Son recalled.
Noting how her father’s entire personality was in his accounting work, the Other Black Girl actress noted how her father sadly ‘lost control of numbers.’
Her family knew things were dire when her father ‘forgot how to get home from the building he worked in for decades.’
A doctor diagnosed her dad with ‘hepatic encephalopathy,’ a neurological disorder stemming from severe liver disease.
As her father continued to struggle with stage four of hepatic encephalopathy, Bellamy confessed she ‘really hated [dealing with her dad’s issues] in a stompy, selfish way,’ at the time.
Her resentment grew as a teenager, with the Promised Land starlet frustrated that she couldn’t do normal things like host sleepovers or go on dates like a normal kid.
Looking back: Staying candid about how she felt about her father’s health battles, Bellamy admitted to feeling resentful she couldn’t enjoy normal activities growing up
Hindsight in 20/20: Although the brunette beauty regretted not understanding’s her dad’s illness more, now she’s dedicated herself to helping other families experiencing the same type of situations with hepatic encephalopathy
Determined to make a difference: She revealed to PEOPLE that she wanted to speak about her experiences with her father so other people going through the same thing could know they weren’t alone
Sadly, her father ended up passing away from his chronic illness when Bellamy was only 15.
Now looking back, she wishes she had understood what her father went through more extensively than she did at the time.
‘It hurts my heart now and I look back and I know I didn’t walk through it the best I could,’ she admitted.’
Determined to make a difference, the actress added, ‘That pain makes me deeply grateful to get to talk about it in a public way now so that nobody else has to be confused or guilty or uninformed.’
