Celebrity News

Tamar Braxton On Healing After Her Suicide Attempt: “I Chose To Change My Life”

This past year was a wake-up call for many of us, and Tamar Braxton knows this all too well. On July 16, 2020, the now 44-year-old star was rushed to the hospital after a suicide attempt that sent the media into a tizzy and gave her family the biggest scare they could possibly imagine. She recently spoke to People about the re-surfaced childhood trauma that led her to that very scary moment nearly a year ago. What opened up old wounds was her experience being molested as a child being brought up in a 2018 taping of her WE tv docuseries Tamar Braxton: Get Ya Life! without her consent.

"I thought I had successfully buried that part of me, but it was manifesting in different ways," she said of her time on the show. "It was coming out in how I dealt with things emotionally, how I looked at situations, how I conducted myself."

It all came to a head when Tamar made a conclusion—that she now realizes was false—that her 7-year-old son Logan was better off without her. She felt the drama-filled show, which often co-starred her ex-boyfriend David Adefeso, wasn't something that Logan could be proud of.

"I didn't want to continue being a disappointment for him. How can his friends' parents respect me if this is what they see every day? I wouldn't let my kid go over to a child's house if this is what was portrayed on television. In my sickness, I thought that if I can take the embarrassment out of his life, maybe he would have a chance to have the best life."

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Even in the midst of her darkest moment, she knew she needed to immediately start the steps to her recovery. After her scare and a weekend in the hospital, she checked herself into a mental health facility for additional treatment for depression and anxiety brought on by traumatic circumstances. To this day she meets with a life coach and a psychiatrist multiple times a week.

On an Instagram post, she also credits shadow work, acupuncture spiritual therapy, and mandatory workouts as part of her new wellness regimen. "I know now that that probably would have destroyed him, that the best life that I can set for him is to be the example, get counseling and show him how to communicate," Tamar says.

If it wasn't clear already how she feels about reality TV now, she writes in a caption on Instagram under a video of her People shoot:

"My job in reality tv was creating and manipulating this story for me that I absolutely hated….& just like any other abuser, there is little or no accountability and denial.🥴"

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A more public forum for her healing has been a podcast she started during this journey, Under Construction with Tamar Braxton. Having reflected on everything, she says:

"I'm not where I was, but there's still work to be done."

Featured image by Prince Williams/Wireimage