In the four years since Christina Applegate was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, the Dead To Me star has been open about the way the disease has affected her life. Christina is a mom to 14-year-old Sadie, and as her daughter continues to process her emotions around her mom’s progressive disease, they’ve had some pretty tough conversations. Christina said one of those discussions “broke” her.
During an appearance on Kelly Ripa‘s Let’s Talk Off Camera podcast, Christina said that her daughter is the reason she gets up in the morning, adding, “She’s the reason I’m still here and trying.”
That doesn’t mean that things don’t get complicated between the mom and daughter sometimes, especially when they talk about the inevitable changes that Christina has gone through as a result of her diagnosis.
“But she did say to me, and we got into a big thing the other day, and sorry Sadie, but it has to be said. She said, ‘I missed who you were before you got sick,'” she said. “That is just like a knife to the heart because I miss who I was before I got sick, too. Very much.”
Back in June 2024, Sadie joined her mom’s podcast, MeSsy, to talk about how she feels about Christina’s MS diagnosis, and even then, she admitted that it was tough seeing her mom lose the abilities she’d always known her to have.
“Every night, I remember, when I was a kid, we would dance and everything in her room for hours at a time,” Sadie said, adding, “It was hard seeing my mom lose a lot of the abilities she used to have in my childhood … It’s just really difficult seeing her go through this.”
At the time, Christina told her daughter how hard it is not being able to do everything for her the way she used to.
“I don’t ever want you to feel that I’m not capable to be your protector, your mother,” she said. “I love you, I want to make you food, I want to bring it you, I want to do all the things. And I do, when I can, and I feel incredibly guilty when I can’t. But you’re always pretty darn cool about it, kid.”
