Tamar Braxton Cries As She Opens Up About Suicide Attempt: ‘I Felt Like I Was Embarrassing’ My Son
Tamar Braxton continues to share emotional details about her attempted suicide in July. In a new interview, she admitted that her son Logan, 7, was ‘the reason’ she considered taking her life.
Tamar Braxton became emotional while discussing her suicide attempt on Taraji P. Henson‘s Peace Of Mind Facebook Watch talk show on Monday. In the episode, titled “Surviving Mental Breakdowns” Tamar revealed that her 7-year-old son, Logan Herbert, 7, “was the reason why I made that decision” to attempt to take her own life in July. But, why?
“I just felt like he deserved better, I felt like I was embarrassing him, being a fool on TV,” the Grammy-winning singer, 43, told Taraji, who asked, “You thought he would be better without you?” Tamar replied, “In that moment, ‘cause I knew that was not what my whole life really was, it’s not who I was. I didn’t want him to be embarrassed in front of his friends…his foul-mouthed, ghetto Mama.”
Earlier in the interview, Taraji’s best friend and co-host Tracie Jade asked Tamar to pinpoint the time when she first felt she was “losing control” of her life. “The first time I knew that things wasn’t normal, was when everything went down with The Real,” Tamar said about her controversial exit from the daytime talk show in 2016. “I was in my bedroom; it was completely dark,” she described about the aftermath of leaving the show.
Tamar went on to explain the “fog” she felt she was in during her darkest time. “You don’t shower, you don’t eat, you don’t know what day of the week it is or the time…,” she said, admitting, “You don’t care. I was able to hide it enough, to pull myself … barely…out of it, and then I go back to the same toxic lifestyle, without dealing with everything that happened to me prior and that is continually happening to me, right? From day-to-day I was just barely sliding by y’know?,” she continued. “I just felt choked, because it was no escape, I just didn’t see another way out… I wanted to die, everything was going wrong.” — To that, Taraji requested for Tamar to provide “a list” of what was going wrong in her life at the time.
“I had no relationship with my family, I was estranged from my sisters, including my mother, and I worked with my family – we had no healing time,” she said about her famous family, who previously starred in WeTV’s Braxton Family Values. Following her suicide attempt, the network confirmed to HollywoodLife on July 31, that they parted ways with Tamar at the singer’s request.
Tamar continued on Peace of Mind with Taraji, “My relationship with my fiancé [David Adefeso] at the time was out of control, I saw no signs of nothing, y’know. The relationship with my child was surface, meaning like, yeah I check-in, but I wasn’t really checkin’ in. Y’know I would make him some food but I didn’t know if he liked it,” she said, adding, “I gained 50 pounds, so I didn’t even recognize myself anymore, that should have been such a huge sign to me, that something is WRONG, that things are not going well at all.”
Back in mid-July, Tamar was hospitalized after she was found unresponsive at the Ritz-Carlton Residences at LA Live on July 16. At the time, LAPD told HollywoodLife they answered a call at 9:45 pm, that was generated from the Ritz Carlton in Downtown Los Angeles for an individual with a “medical emergency.” Police added that the individual was transported from the Ritz Carlton. Though, authorities did not identify the individual in crisis.
Tamar was with ex [David Adefeso] at the time of her distress, as heard in a 911 audio call obtained by HollywoodLife. Adefeso can be heard panicking on the call, telling a 911 dispatcher in part, that his girlfriend “has been drinking. She’s on medication for depression. I don’t know how much. She sent a letter earlier. Just ask them to hurry.”
On July 30, Tamar broke her silence in a lengthy note posted to Instagram, in which she revealed that she attempted to “end” her life after feeling “overworked” and “underpaid.” At the time, she shared a photo of her and her son alongside a two-page note that explained how she began to lose herself at the constant “demands” of her work in the reality television space.
“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,” she wrote in part, explaining, “I felt like I was no longer living, I was existing for the purpose of a corporations gain and ratings, and that killed me.”
Watch all new episodes of Peace of Mind with Taraji every Monday and Wednesday at 9am PT / 12pm ET on Facebook Watch. Episodes can also be found on Taraji P. Henson’s Facebook page.
If you are in crisis, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.