Halle Berry forgave ‘abusive’ father with the help of spiritual healer and therapy: ‘He was doing the best he could’

Halle Berry opened up on her tough relationship with her late father (Picture: Getty/@halleberry)

Halle Berry has revealed how she was able to forgive her ‘abusive’ father with the help of a spiritual healer, realising his behaviour was a product of his upbringing.

The actress, 55, opened up on NPR’s Fresh Air podcast about her relationship with her father Jerome Jesse Berry, who died in 2003.

Speaking about how her directorial debut Bruised and the abusive relationships it depicts, she explained: ‘There’s lots of abuse in my childhood.

‘I grew up with an alcoholic father that was very abusive, both verbally, emotionally, physically.’

Halle has previously spoken about her father’s alcoholism and how it robbed them of the ‘relationship we were meant to have,’ but learned to forgive his behaviour after finding out more about his life.

Jerome had left Halle and her mother when Halle was just three years old, and the actress explained: ‘When he died, I was given a gift of talking to a spiritual healer and someone that took me through some spiritual exercises to sort of heal my wound with my dad.’

Halle understood her dad’s behaviour was due to ‘generational trauma’ (Picture: @halleberry)

She found it easier to forgive him when she realised his behaviour was because he didn’t receive the ‘love and guidance’ that he needed as a child.

 ‘He wasn’t born into the world an abusive, alcoholic man who was out of control. He became that by what he was and was not given; what he was exposed to and by what he wasn’t exposed to,’ she said.

She is now ‘full of love’ towards her father (Picture: John Salangsang/REX/Shutterstock)

Halle found out her dad was raised by an ‘alcoholic father and a mother who was so broken herself,’ and discovered that the trauma started a generation earlier as past generations of her family came from slavery.

She continued: ‘When I keep tracing it back, you realise that this was just generational trauma. That my father was just trying to survive. He was trying to find himself, find his manhood.

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‘And he was doing the best he could, and while he failed me and my family miserably, he really was only working with the tools he had been given.’

After discovering the circumstances leading to his alcoholism and abusive behaviour, Halle said she was able to look at him with ‘empathy’ and be ‘full of love’ for him as he was just turning to alcohol to ‘numb’ himself from past trauma.

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