Nearly a decade of her life was spent struggling with one loss after another. She fought through multiple miscarriages, a brain haemorrhage, a divorce, and a bitter custody battle. Finally, she is in the happy place she deserves to be with her three adopted sons.
You've seen her in Basic Instinct, Casino and so much more. Truth be told, it was hard not to fall in love with her mesmerizing eyes, beautiful blonde hair and her acting prowess. But underneath all of that, Sharon Stone is a woman who has been through the toughest of times for nearly a decade and managed to come out stronger. Her journey to motherhood was not easy and the fight to survive took a lot out of her.
It all started when she received heart-breaking news - that she wouldn't be able to have kids due to an autoimmune condition that made it difficult for her to carry a pregnancy to term, reported the Daily Mail. While she was married to her then-husband Phil Bronstein, they tried to have kids, but as a result of this condition, she suffered two heart-wrenching miscarriages.
While trying, the couple had also consulted with an adoption attorney. It was during the last miscarriage that she finally received a ray of hope. Their adoption attorney brought news where she learned she'd be able to adopt a newborn boy named Roan and on June 1st, 2000, Sharon had finally become a mom.
“The last time I lost the baby … I went into 36 hours of labor. While we were at the hospital, our adoption attorney called … I thought, ‘This is such a godsend’ … ‘This is so right.' This is so right.' I always thought I would adopt. Even when I was young, I used to look up how to adopt,” she told the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP).
However, this happiness only lasted a short while.
In the fall of 2001, Sharon Stone was rushed to a San Francisco ER. There, doctors discovered, while she was in an out of a coma for nine days, that her vertebral artery, which runs through the neck into the base of the skull, had ruptured causing a brain hemorrhage. "By then I had bled into my spinal column, my brain, and my facial cavity at a steady pace," she told AARP. "My brain was pushed forward into my face. I'd lost 18 percent of my body mass."
She went under the knife for seven hours as surgeons worked their hardest to repair her torn artery with 22 platinum coils and stop the bleeding. "They saved my life," she said. "I came out of the hospital with short- and long-term memory loss. My lower left leg was numb. I couldn't hear out of my right ear. The side of my face was falling down. I thought, 'I'll never be pretty again. Who's going to want to be around me?'"
It was around this time that she noticed problems arising in her marriage. "He just didn't see me, talk to me, look at me," she says of Phil. She believed "his initial intention with me was probably corrupt. I was suckered. I'm embarrassed to say that."
And then more tragedy struck. In 2004, she had to endure a painful divorce from her husband. Worse than that was the fact that it also resulted in an even more painful custody battle over their adopted son, Roan, which she lost.
"I had had a brain hemorrhage and was an actress who had made sexy movies," Sharon said when the court made its decision to give custody of Roan to Phil. "My main concern is that I support him, I love him and am steady," she told AARP. Yet, it may have even been her darkest moment. She recalled saying, "'God, please help me. I know I have to go out there and raise money. But I've lost my child, I've lost my health, I've lost everything.' I was just broken," reported Yahoo! News.
But it was her adoption of Roan that led her to adopt two more sons in infancy, Laird and Quinn. Sharon gushed, "I'm loving raising my kids. Quinn is in junior kindergarten, and he's very exclamatory! Like a little FBI agent, he tells you everything that's happening, so I call him Agent Quinn. 'Mom! Toots pooped in the yard!' 'Thank you, Agent Quinn.' I've made humanitarian causes and my children much more my priority than the Hollywood scene, being liked and getting movie parts."
Today, 61-year-old Sharon Stone is a happy mother-of-three, working towards being a good, involved mother and a humanitarian. "The other day, I asked my son Laird if he knew how much I loved him and he said, ‘Yeah. Because you chose me,’" Sharon said, according to New Idea.
"I watch videos from when they were small and am absolutely enthralled by that. But those moments just keep coming." And when the going gets tough, it's her sons that are her lifeline. "I think that love is the greatest faith there is and if you stay faithful in your love, then you’re going to be OK."
She said at a luncheon in Beverly Hills, "Motherhood didn't come easily, but it came lovingly to me by angels ... I'm grateful my kids chose me, I am a lucky mom."
"I’m now a single mother with three adopted sons, and it has been the great privilege of my life to raise them. When you adopt, you realise any child could be your child, any person could be your relative. After that you never see the world in the same way again. I’m connected to everyone on this planet. And that’s a miracle in and of itself," she told Vogue.
References:
https://www.aarp.org/entertainment/movies-for-grownups/info-01-2012/sharon-stone-interview.html
https://www.babble.com/entertainment/sharon-stone-adoption/
