In recent years, Naya Rivera has drawn more attention for her rather eccentric off-screen antics than she has for her talent, but having a kid does seem to have mellowed her out a little bit, and now that she’s calmed down and has a book to shill (Sorry Not Sorry, which is out on September 13), she’s ready to reveal some bigtime secrets. One is her struggle with an eating disorder, which she revealed in the hopes of making sure others who are suffering feel less alone. However, the biggest confession seems to be the fact that on her one day off from Glee back in the day, she had an abortion.
Here’s the scoop from the book/People about her eating disorder:
“By the time I was a sophomore, I started feeling that what had begun as a game had maybe gone too far. I just avoided food at all costs,” she writes in Sorry Not Sorry of coping with her parents splitting and reuniting at the same time her acting career was stalling. “If my mom had packed a lunch for me, I’d either trash it or find some excuse to give it away.”
Rivera says she didn’t really realize the severity of her eating disorder until she decided to write about it in her memoir.
“I was so young and it just seemed to be the norm. Everyone was going through similar stuff,” she tells PEOPLE. “I had no way of knowing if I was going through it worse. I was juggling my feelings and it makes me sad that there are girls still going through that 15 years after I went through it.”
It was in 2010 that she fell pregnant with Ryan Dorsey’s child, a discovery she made just a few weeks after breaking up with him to focus on her career. Here’s what she said about her decision to terminate the pregnancy:
“It was very scary to open up about everything,” says Rivera. “It’s not something a lot of people talk about, but I think they should. I know some people might read it and say, ‘What the Hell?’ But I hope someone out there gets something out of it.”
One person she hopes gets something out of her memoir is her son, Josey.
“I hope Josey will read it one day,” she says of the book. “I hope it gives him a better perspective on the issues women face.”
Good for her. It can’t be easy growing up in the spotlight, so it’s good to see her finding the positivity in her struggles and using those experiences to hopefully help others.