Video: Alyssa Milano Explains Why She Shared Sexual Assault Story for the First Time

Alyssa Milano didn't know one tweet would ignite millions of women to share their harrowing tales of sexual harassment and/or abuse, but that's exactly what happened when she tweeted the words "#MeToo" on October 15, 2017. It was a response to the outpouring of women in Hollywood who had come forward with their own accounts of sexual misconduct allegedly committed by fallen producer and director Harvey Weinstein.

Now, one year after posting the tweet, resulting in the launch of campaigns like the #MeToo and #TimesUp, the 45-year-old is revealing what inspired her decision to open up about her own experiences. Thanking her daughter Elizabella for giving her the strength to reveal her plight with sexual harassment, Milano shared a video she recorded for her little girl three months after #MeToo went viral.

"I wanted to make you a little video because I'm sitting in my trailer in Atlanta and I miss you so much, and I wanted to just do this for you," Milano said in the video, shared for the first time on Twitter Monday. "Donald Trump is our president—crazy—and more importantly than that, women everywhere are sharing their stories of sexual harassment and assault, and they're saying phrases like 'me too' and 'times up.'"

Milano went on to reveal she was lying in bed next to her daughter on the night she first wrote, "Me too," and encouraged other women to add to the Twitter-thread by sharing their own experiences with sexual harassment and assault. "I looked down at you and your sweet beautiful face, and I got really scared. I got scared for you, and I sent out a tweet asking for women to stand in solidarity and a lot of people replied," Milano said. "So in a way, I wanted to make this video for you because, in a way, all of this is because of you, because you gave mama the strength. And it's an important time. It feels important. So I wanted to thank you really."

Milano has been an outspoken advocate against sexual misconduct and most recently a staunch protester against the appointment of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was accused of assaulting a woman when he was in high school in the 1980s.

In the video to her daughter, Milano said she hoped the work she and so many other women were doing today would help create a world where her youngest child could "grow up from a strong little girl into a strong woman that knows, really knows, her worth and is valued for her brain and her beautiful big heart and her sweet sweet soul and her talents and not for her body."

"I want you to know that also I'm working. A lot of women are working very hard to make sure that silence is not the norm for your generation," she continued.

Milano added: "My biggest hope for you is that you never have to say me too, but if you do—god forbid, if you do ever have to say me too, I want you to know that you will be heard and that you should speak your truth and that mama's always here for you."

In the days following the #MeToo movement's initial viral moment, Milano appeared on Good Morning America and revealed she was "harassed so many times I can't count." The actor also claimed her experience with sexual assault wasn't related to her Hollywood status and said her "Me too" tweet was "about showing that this happens everywhere, that it's not just Hollywood, that it's not just actresses."