RHOC’s Shannon Beador Was ‘Shocked’ to See Bloody Selfie After DUI but Says ‘I Deserved to Get Hurt’ (Exclusive)

Shannon Storms Beador doesn’t remember snapping a selfie on the night of her DUI arrest in September 2023. But when the Real Housewives of Orange County star, 60, came across the bloody photo of herself on her phone for the first time, she was “shocked.”

It was then it finally hit her just how bad the accident had been.

“That was really traumatic for me,” Storms Beador tells PEOPLE exclusively of the photo. “As you can see, I was injured pretty badly and when I looked at it, it almost felt like I was looking at someone who wasn’t me.”

“I didn’t want to see myself that way, and I didn’t want anyone else to see me that way either,” she says. “I honestly thought I’d never show it to anyone.”

But Storms Beador decided to do just that, sitting down this season and sharing the photo with her costar Heather Dubrow in a scene teased in the premiere.

The mom of three notes that when she decided to show the photo to Dubrow, she knew it was going to get out there and circulate online. But that was a risk she was willing to take.

“It was a big step for me to take that,” she says. “When someone Googles my name probably for the rest of my life, that’s what they’ll see: my face, covered in blood, from the night that easily marked the lowest point of my entire life. But I wanted to be able to speak of everything that happened.”

“I’m not asking for sympathy, and I’m not saying, ‘Oh, feel sorry for me, look at that blood.’ I’m not,” she continues. “But I think when you see that picture, you’re like, ‘Oh, wow, this was bad.’ And showing it was the only way anyone would understand that.”

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Storms Beador was arrested the early hours of Sept. 17 in Newport Beach after crashing her car into a planter box attached to a house. Police recorded a .24 blood alcohol level (three times the legal limit).

She was booked on two misdemeanors and spent a few hours in jail before she was released on a citation. The reality star would later be sentenced to three years of probation, which came with a required order to complete 40 hours of community service and a nine-month alcohol program.

Looking back on the accident now, the reality TV star tells PEOPLE she’s grateful that no one was hurt. But when it comes to herself, she feels differently.

“Oh, I deserved to get hurt,” Storms Beador says “I made a very stupid choice.”

“I could have killed someone,” she adds.”Aand part of my therapy has been trying to move past that guilt and shame. You say to yourself, ‘I could have killed someone… but I didn’t.’ So I don’t want it to appear that I’m taking any of this lightly, because there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about it. But I didn’t hurt someone, and I’m grateful for that.”

She pauses. “Does this act define my life? It defines a part of it,” Storms Beador says. “And it’s going to define a new chapter: the beginning of a new chapter in my life.”

The Real Housewives of Orange County airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Bravo.