Sharon Stone prioritizes her children.
After a torn vertebral artery flowed into her brain for nine days in 2001, the actress was given a 1% chance of survival. Now, 22 years later, the actress is opening up about her new perspective on life and how parenthood has changed her.
“I’m grateful that I chose motherhood as a healthy approach to my life and that I didn’t prioritize Hollywood,” she tells people in the latest edition of the magazine, “because they certainly didn’t prioritize me.”
Overall, Stone, 65, is “grateful” she adopted her boys—Roan, 23, Laird, 18, and Quinn, 17—and describes them as “wonderful kids.” “I’m grateful that I chose the things that I did choose,” she said.
Stone was prospering professionally and emotionally at the time of her health issue. She had gotten her first Oscar nomination five years before for Casino. She had adopted Roan months previously with her then-husband, newspaper editor Phil Bronstein.
Stone went through a difficult period after the incident: her marriage broke apart (she and Bronstein divorced in 2004), and Hollywood, she claims, stopped calling.
Stone recalls her first recuperation process, in which she was “stuttering” and not “seeing correctly.” She also claims to have suffered from memory loss for a long time.
“I lost everything,” she admits. “I lost everything.” My child was taken away from me. I lost my job. I lost all that you consider to be your true identity and existence.”
“I never really got most of it back,” she says, “but I’ve reached a point where I’m okay with it, where I really do recognize that I’m enough.”
When asked how she had the guts to tell her experience, Stone says, “I come from a very broken family.” I grew up feeling that I was supposed to take care of everyone else. It took me a long time to realize that I had my own life, that I didn’t have to repair it for everyone else, that it was alright for me to need care, and that I was enough as a handicapped person. I’m proud of myself and my accomplishments, from surviving to assisting others in surviving.”
Stone currently serves on the board of the Barrow Neurological Foundation, which supports the Arizona hospital run by Stone’s brain surgeon, Dr. Michael Lawton, and will hold its annual Neuro Night fundraiser on October 27. The Foundation’s objective, according to its website, is “saving human lives through innovative treatment, groundbreaking, curative research, and educating the next generation of the world’s leading neurologists.”
“She’s an inspiration to those who are suffering from anything neurological,” adds Lawton, whom Stone credits with saving her life.