Alexia Echevarria Reveals How She Found Her "Healing Process" Before Season 4 of RHOM

Since 2011, viewers have followed Alexia Echevarria's life on The Real Housewives of Miami. She's always let fans in on every aspect of her world, from her marriage to Herman Echevarria to her role as a mom to her life as a businesswoman.

It's been nearly a decade since Season 3 of RHOM aired, and now that fans are catching up with Alexia again during Season 4, streaming exclusively on Peacock, she admits she's not the same woman she was the last time around. We mean, how could she be?

"I was very uncomfortable talking about certain things, and like I said, now I'm not and it's not like it's a new Alexia. It's just, like, something that I did on my own, I worked out on my own, and it's easier just to get things out now," she shared in a recent interview with Bravo Insider.

With so much that has happened in her life between Seasons 3 and 4 (including separating in 2015 from Herman, who later passed away in 2016 and building up her career by opening Alexia + Frankie's Beauty Bar, all while balancing motherhood and her friendships, as well as finding love again), Alexia was ready to let the world back in and share it all.

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"So I knew that coming back [to RHOM] — we had been on an eight-year hiatus — that we would have some explaining to do and some catching up to do. So, you know, I was aware of that, and I was ready for that because I felt like we were so ready," Alexia said. "I always got, like, love and support, and a lot of people knew about it [the stuff in my life in between seasons]. But obviously, it's very different from when you're back on TV and you're sharing this."

In between then and now, with everything that took place in her life, Alexia revealed that she found her own way to process the ups and downs, especially around the time of son Frankie Rosello's accident.

"A lot of people don't know, but after Frankie's accident, well, during Frankie's accident, I started keeping a journal, and I think that helped me a lot," she said. "And two years later, I started writing a book just for myself, and I, obviously, have to add a lot of chapters to it because a lot has happened since 2010. So I just started doing that, and it was, like, a healing process for me. I got to write a lot of things that I was ashamed about talking [about] before. I started writing them, and it was kind of like I started, like, accepting it and kinda going through the whole process and kinda feeling good about it and feel proud and saying, 'Why have I been ashamed about all these things?' I should be proud that I was able to go through them and learn from them and be on the other side of it, right?"

Alexia also said that she now feels more at ease to be unapologetic about who she is, noting, "I'm not gonna lie, that [being in] my 50s helped me, too." "I don't care at this point, and I don't care what you think of me. I don't care what your opinion is, you know? Obviously, I do care about the people that really care and love me, I do, honestly, but it's not, it's like, I'm not ashamed anymore, and it's a great feeling, you know?" she added. "It's a great feeling not to be ashamed about a lot of things."

These days, Alexia is recently remarried to Todd Nepola. As fans have seen during Season 4 of RHOM, she was in the midst of planning their wedding. But after the season wrapped, the couple made the decision to elope. They married in November in St. Barts with just the two of them in attendance.

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"This is exactly what we wanted. We wanted to come into the new year already as a married couple," Alexia said of her nuptials. "I felt like we needed this for us as a couple. We went through so much the last couple months in 2021, so we started 2022 [married] and I feel like we needed to do it. It's like, we always felt we were married. I feel like it becomes official [when] you actually sign the paper; it just changes things in a different way. Like, there's no, really, [way] to describe it. It's just, like, the way you act, just everything," she said. "It kind of solidifies whatever it was that you were feeling. So the year started off great because we're married and everything else is good."

So, how did Alexia's RHOM cast members react to the elopement? "Some of them were surprised. I was like, 'How were you surprised?'" she said. "Marysol [Patton] wanted to come with us, and we didn't let her. I was like, there's no family, there's no friends, there's nobody. It's just about him and I, and that's really what it was about."

New episodes of RHOM are available on Thursdays exclusively on Peacock, where fans can also catch up on Seasons 1 through 3.