A post shared by Lisa Rinna (@lisarinna) on Jul 3, 2018 at 7:58pm PDT
Lisa Rinna’s relationship with her mother Lois broke up when she was a teenager, but they reconciled decades later. She was absent for much of her childhood, and her mother had a tough time with her during those years. “They always thought I was cheating on her. They were so unfair,” she told People. In the early years of their relationship, Lois didn’t recognize Lisa as the daughter that she had, even though her mother has three other children. At that time, she was keeping their relationship a secret. She wouldn’t “come over and take a look at me,” she said. “I’d walk around in long socks, like I was hiding or something. I didn’t want her to get mad.”
Lois didn’t always have to face that sort of deceitful behavior from her daughter, but Lisa struggled to let her mom in the house. “I’d always say, ‘I’m not giving you my place unless you come over.’ I’d take it in stride, but I still wanted her to come over,” Lisa recalled. Lisa also explained that she and her mother often fought, but that their relationship actually started to improve a few years later. When Lois did finally move in, she earned a reputation for being a very strict disciplinarian, so the tension with her daughter’s husband and family — who didn’t even get to spend the holidays with Lois — wasn’t much of a deterrent. But it was an issue that Lisa had to come to terms with.
“My father and my mother always fought. My father would beat on my mother. For the first couple of years of my marriage, he wouldn’t let my mother see us. It was the same for her with me,” Lisa said. “She’d say, ‘You can’t do that. We love you.’ But it was just like she was cruel to me. It was just awful. In hindsight, I can see why I let it get out of control. I was still a kid.” It took five years of fighting to get her mother back on board. They started talking again about their feelings, but there was always work to be done. “I really didn’t want her to see how happy I was. And she went, ‘I’m sorry. I just can’t do it,’” Lisa recalled. “We cried, we hugged, we gave each other the five years we needed. Then one day she asked, ‘Can we go visit?’ and I said, ‘You’re going.’”
Six years after that first Thanksgiving, Lisa says she was finally able to bring her mother to her wedding to Harry Hamlin. She finally turned over the keys, but instead of announcing that they were back together, she broke the news to everyone present. Lisa, who was visibly emotional, shared the story on her Instagram account, and said that she was proud to see how well her mother was handling everything. “Every time someone tells her she needs to lose the weight, she just lifts up her chin and doesn’t say a word. She’s tough, and I think it shows how strong she was,” Lisa wrote. “It is also a reminder of just how much our family has changed since my parents were still married. There’s a reason why my family doesn’t like to have gatherings. Our Thanksgiving table is always missing.”
Lisa recently appeared on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, which means she’ll soon be coming to the reunion, where she says she’ll be giving her own version of events to the producers, but she thinks they know what to expect. “I’m sure they know what I’m going to do. But what if I change my mind? Then they’ll have to call the reunion off,” she laughed.