Billie Lourd is paying tribute to her late mother, Carrie Fisher, in a heartwarming post on the seventh anniversary of her death.
On Instagram, the Scream Queens actress, 31, shared a sweet snap of herself and her mom from her childhood along with a long caption addressing her lingering grief and her mom’s lifelong impact.
“It has been 7 years since my mom died (but who’s counting?? Me I guess?) Every anniversary brings a different iteration of my grief. Some infuse me with rage, some make me cry all day long, some make me feel dissociated and empty, some make me feel nothing, some make me feel guilty for feeling nothing, and some make me feel all of those things all at once,” Lourd wrote. “This year when I woke up I felt grateful – or ✨griefull✨if you will. Grief has infused my life with a sense of appreciation I had never had before. It makes me soak up every moment of joy as if it were my last.”
The Ticket to Paradise actress shared that the gratefulness felt especially powerful this year through special moments she experiences daily with her children. Lourd shares two children, Kingston, 3, and Jackson, 1, with her husband of three years, Austen Rydell.
“Today I was holding my daughter while she was napping in my arms and my eyes welled up with tears of joy. I laughed at myself then cried more cause I was laughing. I felt my mombys presence like the warmth of the sun on your skin on a hot summer day. The kind of warmth where you unknowingly close your eyes and take a slow breath through your nose and grin,” Lourd shared.
“I miss her every day but the cliche is also true – she is with me every day – she infuses my joyful moments with even more joy. As I tell my son, she lives in the stars – and she damn sure makes my life sparkle. Sending my love to all my griefers out there. And hoping everyone can feel a little sparkle of griefull among all the feelings grief inevitably brings. ❤️” the message ended.
Fisher died in 2016 after experiencing a medical emergency on a flight from London to Los Angeles following the completion of her book tour. After landing at Los Angeles International Airport, the Star Wars actress was rushed to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center where she was placed on a ventilator. Four days later, Fisher died at the age of 60.
Just one day after her death, Fisher’s mother, Singing In the Rain actress Debbie Reynolds, died from a stroke. Lourd has also memorialized her grandmother, whom she referred to as “Abadaba,” a reference to Reynolds’ cover of “Aba Daba Honeymoon.”
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Underneath Lourd’s post on Wednesday, the actress received messages of support from her fans and those who shared gifs, quotes and love to the actress on the tough anniversary.
“So beautifully said and felt,” responded Emily In Paris star Lily Collins, the daughter of Genesis drummer and frontman Phil Collins.
“Beautifully said sweet friend 🥹 moving with our grief is the most life affirming thing we can do because it is the event that makes life so damn precious,” wrote Frances Bean Cobain, daughter of Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love. “How lucky we are to love people who can break our hearts, for it is the condition of being loved at all 👁️ ❤️ 🫵.”
Each year since her mom’s death, Lourd has posted a touching tribute to her “momby,” honoring the life and legacy that the Princess Leia actress left behind. In May, the American Horror Story actress also accepted a posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in her mom’s name.
Lourd praised the character of Princess Leia for being “strength, she is grace, she is wit, she is femininity at its finest. She knows what she wants and she gets it. She doesn’t need anyone to rescue her because she rescues herself and even rescues the rescuers and no one could have played her like my mother.”
At the time, she shared that following her mother’s death, she had “fallen deeply in love with Leia and the entire Star Wars universe,” going from the little girl unwilling to watch to an “obsessive Star Wars fan.”
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“And I have now passed the torch, or in this case, lightsaber, onto my two children, Kingston and Jackson,” she continued. “I feel so lucky that even though they won’t get to meet my mom, they will get to know a piece of her through Leia and I will get to tell them that the little lady in the TV is my momby, their grandmomby. Leia has become like a family heirloom and not just for my family. I’m not unique. I went to Star Wars Celebration last year and saw mothers and daughters, and even grandmothers were still dressed up like Leia, even though my mom wasn’t there, and I got to talk to hundreds of people about how much my mom meant to them.”
The actress also shared how she appreciates that fans’ love for Princess Leia will continue to live on after her mother’s death and “get passed on from generation to generation, just like my mom passed it on to me and I am now passing it on to my children and hopefully they will pass it on to theirs.”
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