She is Worthy
Jada Pinkett Smith's Right to Tell Her Story
Dear Reader,
I appreciate your precious time to read what I write.
I don’t usually write about popular culture. The collective sadness we are feeling makes everything else feel trivial in comparison. Writing about the marriage of two celebrities was on my mind this week because marriage is always on my mind. A woman’s experience with mental health is always on my mind.
And so, a writer’s gotta write, when the feeling hits
As a mother, my heart literally aches for the innocent children of Israel, Palestine, and here in America, where our children regularly endure the threat of active shooters within their schools. The blatant disrespect for human life is unfathomable. It’s difficult to imagine the world that my grandson will inherit and that my children will live with when I am no longer here.
I pray for peace, life, health, and safety for all children of the world. If that is wrong, I don’t want to be right.
As a black woman writer, a mental health advocate, someone who has experienced trauma and depression, and who has lived to tell the story of a thirty-year marriage, I fully support Jada Pinkett Smith for writing and sharing her story.
It's disappointing to hear people sharing posts on social media like, "Keep us out of the group chat. Why do we need to know all of their business? I get it. Take yourself out of their business if you must. Ask yourself, “Why am I taking the time to post or comment about it if you don’t care to know about their marriage?”
Jada has battled with depression while her marriage was under a microscope for years. I can't imagine having constant commentary about my marriage. It’s hard enough to have your family commenting on it.
Why are they just now disclosing they have been separated since 2016 to the public?
Does the public have a right to know everything while they are figuring out their marriage?
Maybe Jada got tired of being the villain in this story.
Is it possible that she was taking one for the team when she and Will sat down at the “Red Table” and talked about her "entanglement?"
Will made a choice as an adult to sit down with her. He clearly says that in the interview. We don't know every detail of their communication.
Why are we blaming the woman in this situation for humiliating him?
Do we know whether or not he had any entanglements of his own?
Why didn't many of us hear the part when they clearly stated that they were separated at the time?
They thought there was no hope for them as a couple.
Is it possible that she was trying to protect Will's place as the world's greatest movie star? The family and their long-term marriage were a part of his image. It set him apart from the typical Hollywood movie star. Maybe they agreed to protect that image as a part of their brand?
Is that wrong? I don't know. I do know that it is their choice to make.
If you read his book, you know he is extremely ambitious. If you read his book, you know that he came into their marriage with his own experience of childhood trauma. A broken family. A father whom he witnessed physically abuse his mother. Will felt helpless in that situation, like a coward. The truth is he was just a boy.
Jada also had a lot of pain to work through during their twenty-plus years together. Her parents had issues with addiction while she was growing up. They did not meet her needs as a child. In many ways, she had to raise herself.
She has been brave enough to share that with us, and also look deeply within through therapy and inner work. She tried everything to wrangle her untamed depression.
Has she always made the best decisions? Absolutely not. We don't have to agree with her choices, but she has the right to make them.
Why do we place blame at her feet because of how he behaved at the Academy Awards?
That was an extremely disappointing night for everyone including us as the audience.
Where is our grace for his humanity? Don't we all make mistakes?
Yes. Will was brazen and acted out of character. Personally, I was shocked. I thought something had to be going on with him mentally. I had no idea what it was.
Why does the world assume it was Jada pulling his strings?
Misogyny is on full display when we conclude that the woman in this relationship is to blame for bringing her man down to the point of humiliation.
The last time I checked, there were two people in their marriage. He made his own decisions.
The fact that they decided to separate but not completely dismantle their marriage is an agreement we may not understand or agree with or understand. However, they are the two adults who choose how to live their complicated life.
Many of us have hear pieces of a story and place judgment on what we think we know. We only know part of the story. Perhaps we never know it in its entirety. Maybe it’s none of our business.
I am a woman who has worked to maintain a thirty-year marriage. I know that everything is different from what it seems. It’s not all sunshine, roses, wining, dining, and fabulous vacations. People have no idea how much work was involved in making those vacations happen. I had to turn flips to make arrangements for everyone to be cared for in my absence. My husband’s extensive business travel while I was here alone with our kids bought us airline points for the few trips we could pull off.
Marriage is a shit-ton of work. It's a lifetime of compromise, giving, and taking. It's never 50/50. Ask Michelle Obama.
Only the two people in the marriage know the whole truth. And even then, what each individual experiences within the confines of marriage is not the same. My husband has not lived my experience, and I haven't lived his.
Just like Jada and Will, (minus all of the money) we come from two entirely different worlds with our individual childhood traumas, some of which we didn't realize we had until we experienced life and had children. Having children changed everything in me. Our boys have special needs. That was an absolute curve ball. This was not the life we expected. We rolled with it and did our best. We played our parts. Is it always pretty? Nope! Is life always the dream we had in our heads when we were growing up? Not even close!
A mother's plight is based on conditioning of a patriarchal society. Life's reality does not match the ideal of marriage and motherhood.
As mothers, we smile for pictures and try to make life beautiful for our children. We want them to have the things we missed out on in our own childhood. Most of us did not experience our parents in a happy marriage, which was till death do us part. And yet, somehow, we still believed in this fairytale. We thought we could be exactly who our children needed us to be, while being a good enough wife. Trying to live up to that is exhausting.
When your children grow up, and you finally have time to breathe and look at yourself, you realize that you can't give yourself away to your children and/or your spouse without losing deep parts of yourself. This is where the work that we have to do comes to light.
Life is not the fairytale we were sold before we said, "I do."
For me, slowly giving myself away to be the mother my children needed, while being a wife and, later in our marriage, a caregiver for my mother, I realized a part of my soul was dying. It didn't entirely kill me, but almost. And yet, I kept going.
I did all of the things while not fully tending my own garden. I didn't want anyone to know the depths of my pain in real-time. I wrote about a lot of it on my blog. If you know me, I’m pretty transparent on social media. I also masked a lot while going to therapy, telling my therapist that I just wanted to go to sleep and not wake up. What I wanted was relief, and it was nowhere in sight.
In Jada's interview with her friend Jay Shetty and in her book, "Worthy," which I am reading now, she describes her battle with depression. It doesn't have to make sense to others.
When you’re depressed it’s not necessarily that you’re sad about something specific. You're just sad. You're exhausted. You're tired of the dark, sometimes irrational thoughts inside your head. You can't find the words to explain it all to those who love you. There is shame and guilt attached to it.
For me, anxiety is not something I invited to come in and play. It's something that I think was laying dormant. When I was young, I kept myself busy trying to have as much fun as humanly possible, to distract myself from it. When I had my children, and my worries became enormous and overwhelming, anxiety lodged inside my body and refused to go away.
"You have a great life. You have a husband, a family, a home, a nice car. What are you unhappy about?"
I’m not unhappy about a thing. I’m just not happy, and there is no relief from it.
I appreciate Jada for writing about what marriage has been like for her.
No two experiences of marriage are the same. Nevertheless, there is something to be learned from every story.
Most of us came into marriage thinking that it would be something that it's not. Two or three kids in you realize your Prince Charming is deeply flawed, and so are you. By then you're all in to the patriarchal institution. You've built a family. You work to preserve it.
Marriage is the second most challenging job you will ever do. The first is having your heart walk around in your child's body. They become teenagers and adults whom you have no control over. And yet, they still have your heart, and you can't take it back.
Jada sharing her story is a radical act. It's brave to share your pain in hopes that someone will feel less alone. Sharing your own suicidal ideation is an act of bravery. Maybe by doing so, a life will be saved. Perhaps someone will read it or hear her words, as I did during her interview with Jay Shetty on his podcast.
In her heart-wrenching interview with Jay, she encouraged people who are suffering with the deep pain of depression. “When you’re feeling like there is no way out other than death, hold on. Keep trying everything until you find the thing that works for you.” That's not easy. And so many people have no access to mental health care.
Life is messy.
Jada is allowed to share her story, regardless of whether or not we agree with her personal decisions.
Pain is pain. Let he who is without pain cast the first stone.
Thank you for this. ❤️💔❤️🩹