Jada Pinkett Smithnever doubted her love forWill Smithor their devotion to their kids,Jaden, 21, andWillow, 18. But over the course of their now 21-year marriage, she nearly reached a breaking point.
“It just felt like loss,” Jada tells PEOPLE in this week’s cover story, in which she, daughter Willow and mom Adrienne, 65, the stars of Facebook Watch’sRed Table Talk, discuss their family’s unbreakable bond.
“There was too much concentration on what was happening externally, and the family unit itself wasn’t getting the attention and care that I felt we needed.”
“Will’s like, ‘We just came from Oslo, going to the [2009] Nobel Peace Prize ceremony [forBarack Obama] as a family, you’ve got a big house with alake– isn’t this amazing?!’ And I’m like, ‘No,'” Jada recalls.
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“By the time my 40th [birthday] came, I was like, ‘I can’t do it anymore.’ I was so depleted.”
While Jada had thoughts of suicide, she recognized what she really needed to do was step back, reassess her whole life and put in some serious work.
“I had to really take time out for me and figure out what I wanted for myself,” she says. “I had to kind of put everyone aside and ask, ‘What would I do every day if it was just Jada?’ I literally had no idea.”
One thing that was clear? She believed she and Will had the tools, and the love, to get to a healthy place and keep the family together.
Sophy Holland
“I am kind of a ride-or-die chick,” she says. “I just knew with the kind of love that Will and I share — which is beyond romantic love — that we could transform our union and figure out how to re-create what we had.”
Their last few years have been among some of their very best.
“The journey between Will and me… we have come to such a beautiful place,” she says, creditingRed Tablefor helping her define and share her truth. “I feel like we have a stronger bond than we even had in the beginning.”
source: people.com
