Tamar Braxton posted an emotional note on Thursday (July 30) confirming her recent suicide attempt and opening up about the toxic culture of the reality TV business.
Braxton, who reportedly attempted to take her life on July 16, said, "Mental illness is real. We have to normalize acknowledging it and stop associating it with shame and humiliation. The pain that I have experienced over the past 11 years has slowly ate away at my spirit and my mental."
Thanking those who supported her during this difficult time, Braxton said firmly that it is her own responsibility to be "real with myself and to be real with the ones who truly love me and care for my healing."
After sharing her best days with fans, Braxton said she wanted to also open up about her darkest ones to "be the light for any man or woman who is feeling the same defeat I felt just only a week ago."
Citing the universal desire to create a secure, safe place for our children and families and share our success with the ones we love, Braxton said she believed that, "as a black woman, as an artist, an influence, a personality I could shape my world, and with whom I believed to be my partners, they could help me share my world."
She added that over the past 11 years she was given assurances to "protect and portray" her story with what she said was the authenticity she was prepared to offer in exchange.
"I was betrayed, taken advantage of, overworked, and underpaid," she wrote, noting that she sent a letter more than two months ago asking to be let out of what she characterized as an "excessive and unfair" situation, without detailing the specifics.
"I explained in personal detail the demise I was experiencing. My cry for help went totally ignored. However the demands persisted. It was my spirit, and my soul that was tainted the most. There are a few things I count on most to be, a good mother, a good daughter, a good partner, a good sister, and a good person. Who I was, begun to mean little to nothing, because it would only be how I was portrayed on television that would matter. It was witnessing the slow death of the woman I became, that discouraged my will to fight. I felt like I was no longer living, I was existing for the purpose of a corporations gain and ratings, and that killed me."
Braxton, 43, was reportedly found unconscious by her boyfriend in an L.A. hotel room on July 16 and later hospitalized for undisclosed reasons. "It was only God’s grace and his mercy on my attempt to end my pain and my life that I am here to utilize my voice,” she wrote. The post pictured Braxton with her seven-year-old son, Logan.
Braxton starred in WeTV's Braxton Family Values (2011-2019), alongside her family, including Grammy-winning sister Toni Braxton, as well as Tamar & Vince (2012-2017) with her ex-husband and she's appeared on Celebrity Big Brother (2019) and Dancing with the Stars (2015), co-hosted the daily talk show The Real (2013-2016) and is slated to appear in a new reality show in September, Tamar Braxton: Get Ya Life!
On Tuesday, WeTV tweeted that, "Tamar Braxton has been an incredibly important member of the WeTV family for more than a decade, and our first concern is her recovery and well-being."
The note said that given her current circumstances, they would postpone the premiere of the show until Sept. 10 from its originally planned August debut. "This series was conceived by Tamar and is a real portrait of a dynamic woman juggling the demands of being a single mother, a new relationship and her career."
See Braxton's full post below.
