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October marks National Domestic Violence Awareness Month and with only a few more days to the month to go, one funny woman is giving some insight into her very sad family past.'Clean House' host Niecy Nash took to the new CBS daytime talk show 'The Talk' to discuss with the co-hosts how she experienced domestic violence first-hand as a youth.
"When I was a teenager, I saw my mother get shot by her boyfriend," the Emmy Award-winning television personality shared. "He just turned in one moment, and looked like a person who you just did not recognize."
Nash said her mother's boyfriend shot her with a sawed off double barrel shotgun and that the incident took place in front of all of her siblings.
"I don't wish this on anyone," she continued. "I believe that you take those first signs when somebody shows you a part of them that would abuse you and hurt you and hit you with the same hand that they hug you with [and you] get out immediately. Immediately!" she exclaimed.Lucky for the former 'Dancing with the Stars' finalist, her mother did survive the shooting incident, but their brush with domestic violence haunted both Nash and her mother.
"In that moment, I decided to stop feeling it just cost me too much, so I just said, 'I don't want to feel anything.' I was walking around in life with this dark cloud over me and I was a very negative person," the comedic actress disclosed. "My comedy was really birthed out of the tragedies that I experienced in life."
The 'Reno 911' star said that after being shot and the murder of her brother, her mother became depressed and did not want to get out of bed.
"I was in my early 20s and I would go stand at the foot of my mother's bed and tell her jokes and stories because I knew I was funny and that was the only thing I could do while she was suffering," Nash told 'The Talk' and 'Early Show' co-host Julie Chen.
The 40 year-old mother of three said that her jokes put her mother in a better space and eventually her mother stopped staying in bed and invited friends over to hear her comedian daughter entertain her girlfriends.
But for Nash she had to deal with how the domestic violence affected her in her own way.
"I'm grateful that I was able to find a way out of that darkness because it can be a cloud over you. I was so afraid to feel," she revealed. "I had to go back and cry all my un-cried tears...I got in the bathroom and I said I got to let the past go and I stayed in that tub until I had filled it up with my tears and when I got out I said, 'It's time to start right over.'"
Now, Nash is happily engaged and planning her wedding with Jay Tucker. The couple plans to marry next May.
"I want to be a picture and I want my mom to be a picture of what survivors look like because you can choose to be depressed and broken down...about it or you can celebrate the fact [that you overcame it]," she said.
"A good friend of mine, who is also my matron of honor in my wedding, Sheryl Lee Ralph says 'Any day above ground is a good day."
And today is certainly a good day for Niecy Nash.
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