According to Dailymail, Jada Pinkett Smith has offered a candid glimpse into her struggles with depression and despair during a tumultuous period in her life, which coincided with her 40th birthday in 2011. Despite the facade of a seemingly perfect life, which included a beautiful family, a superstar husband in Will Smith, a lavish lifestyle, fame, and fortune, Jada revealed her internal battles in her upcoming memoir, “Worthy.”
In the book, Jada shared that, behind closed doors, she grappled with bouts of depression and overwhelming hopelessness that eventually ignited within her like a raging inferno. She recalled feeling trapped in a cycle of despair and revealed that she had contemplated her existence and questioned her will to live.
Jada’s life has not been devoid of adversity. She grew up in a tumultuous environment in Baltimore, marked by her mother’s heroin addiction and her father’s alcoholism. She even delved into drug dealing during her high school years, culminating in her friendship with Tupac Shakur.
In her adult years, Jada discovered that she was suffering from “complex trauma with PTSD and dissociation,” though she had not received an official diagnosis during the intense distress she experienced around her 40th birthday.
Despite the children being ‘hands down, the best thing that ever happened to me,’ her storybook life had not ‘prevented me from hitting the wall I was speeding toward at a hundred miles per hour, knowing full well – this s***’s gonna blow!’
She threw herself into the Hollywood rolodex of potential cures – ‘Goddess gatherings, silent yoga retreats, backpacking alone, studying every religion you can think of,’ even a trip to see a Padrino in Cuba – to no avail.
‘Adding to my distress,’ she wrote: ‘Will and I weren’t in a good place and hadn’t been for a while. I couldn’t make it right no matter how hard I tried.’
She elaborated: ‘We couldn’t hear or see each other – at all. Confiding in my close friends seemed unfair to them and to Will and me.’
In an excerpt from her memoir, Jada recounted a drive through Ojai, California, en route to a meeting with a mysterious “Medicine Woman” whom she hoped would help alleviate her struggles. She grappled with fear and uncertainty, questioning whether seeking help might prove more perilous than continuing to suffer in silence.
For years, Jada had concealed her inner turmoil from the public, putting on a facade of being okay and going with the flow. However, the facade had cracked, revealing her inner struggles with feelings of unworthiness and disconnection from her seemingly ideal life.
Therapy had provided some relief, but it wasn’t a panacea for her deep-seated issues. Her solace came from her children, Jaden, Willow, and Trey, as well as her relationship with them, but even they could not fully fill the void within her.
Jada’s story is a poignant reminder that external success and fulfillment of societal expectations do not always guarantee happiness. Despite the outward appearance of an enviable life, she faced an internal battle that took years to understand and address.
The memoir, titled “Worthy,” is set to be published on October 17, and Jada is expected to discuss her experiences further in a promotional interview with Hoda Kotb, which will also touch upon the high-profile Oscars incident involving her and Will Smith.
Throughout her life, Jada has weathered numerous challenges, including her entanglement with another man, which became the subject of public scrutiny. Despite the difficulties, she and Will have remained a closely connected showbiz power couple, and her memoir promises to shed light on the complexities and vulnerabilities behind their seemingly picture-perfect lives.
