Tallulah Willis is reminding fans suffering from eating disorders that the road to recovery is not linear.
The youngest daughter of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore penned a candid message on social media Thursday to her fellow “ED recovery babies,” admitting that she has been struggling to accept her changing body.
“I’m having an intens [sic] moment of romanticizing unhealthy times and how it felt to move through the day in that size body,” she wrote on Instagram. “Just wanted to voice it because I know (hope) I’m not alone.”
Tallulah, 30, paired the emotional post with several photos from her childhood to remind herself why it is important to stay the course.
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“This little raggymuffin is so special and it’s strange to know that and want to give her abundance and vitality – LIFE! whilst at the EXACT same moment feeling pulled by an old desire, deep down from the pit spot in your belly, to compare to the ‘better’ version of me,” she wrote.
She concluded the post by reminding her 400,000-plus followers that “it’s ok to be in the middle of the messy and not totally have it all sorted yet.”
Tallulah has been very open about her recovery in recent years, sharing before-and-after photos of herself in August 2023 to appreciate how far she has come in her journey.
Although the Wyllis founder put a trigger warning to warn fans that one of the photos was a “pre-recovery image,” she also shared a text thread in which she gushed about her new “healthy body.”
“I love her,” she captioned the carousel. “And I love her, and I see how courageous she’s been.
“steady on the course my bbs,” she added, along with the hashtags “#edrecovery” and “#iloveme.”
A few months earlier, Tallulah — who first opened up about having body dysmorphia in 2014 — shared intimate details about her longtime battle with anorexia in a letter published by Vogue.
“For the last four years, I have suffered from anorexia nervosa, which I’ve been reluctant to talk about because, after getting sober at age 20, restricting food has felt like the last vice that I got to hold on to,” she wrote in May 2023.
The actress explained that she was extremely underweight, constantly “freezing,” had to get IV transfusions and couldn’t even walk around her neighborhood in fear that she would not have “a place to sit down and catch [her] breath.”
While battling the debilitating disorder, Tallulah was also dealing with ADHD, depression and borderline personality disorder, the latter of which she was diagnosed with while in treatment at Driftwood Recovery in Texas in June 2022.
She explained that — despite her dad’s battle with dementia — her parents “stepped in” and sent her to the facility after noticing things were getting worse following her split from her fiancé, Dillon Buss.
Although Tallulah left the center feeling “a lot better” after a four-month stay, she noted that recovery is a “lifelong” journey — one she is willing to endure for the sake of her family.
“I realized that what I wanted more than harmony with my body was harmony with my family — to no longer worry them, to bring a levity to my sisters and my parents,” she continued.
“An emaciated body wouldn’t do that. I had felt the weight of people worrying about me for years, and that put me on my knees.”
If you or someone you know is affected by any of the issues raised in this story, call 988 or continue to contact Crisis Text Line by texting “NEDA” to 741741.
