Kim Richards has come a long way in the last 12 months. One year after completing her third stint in rehab for alcohol abuse, the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star recently stopped by Us Weekly‘s New York City offices to share her success story with viewers: “This season I’m sober and I feel great!”
The former child star — mom to Brooke, 26, Whitney, 22, Chad, 21, and Kimberly, 17 — admitted she had a hard time transitioning from rehab to the real world at first. “Being sober and coming home from treatment, reconnecting with my kids, was not as easy as I thought it was going to be,” the Escape to Witch Mountain actress said. “I came home thinking, ‘Gosh, everything’s back to the way it used to be.'”
“We’ve worked together through this and we’ve come out way ahead of the game. I’ve grown a lot, they’ve grown a lot, and you will see [that] through the season,” Richards, 48, told Us. “It’s been an amazing journey, for sure.”
Seeing her erratic, dissolved behavior during the first two seasons of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills was too much for Richards to bear. “I didn’t want to watch the other seasons, because it was hard for me. But yet I filmed the other seasons knowing I was doing not the right thing. And that was a choice I made,” she said. “I knew I wasn’t doing the right thing, and I did it anyway.”
Kim also hinted that her strained relationship with older sister and costar Kyle Richards-Umansky is on the mend.
These days, the single star is feeling happier and healthier than ever. “I’m so grateful today for the relationships I have with my kids, my sister and my friends, God, my higher power,” Richards told Us. “Spiritually, I’m super blessed.”
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills airs Mondays at 9 p.m. EST on Bravo.
