Sheree Zampino is reflecting on an emotional conversation she recently had with her son Trey.
via People:
In this week’s episode of Red Table Talk, centered on the topic of toxic forgiveness, the ex-wife of Will Smith sat down with Smith’s now-wife Jada Pinkett Smith, Adrienne Banfield Norris and country singer Jana Kramer, where she revealed that Trey, 29, told her that he “didn’t feel loved” by Zampino growing up.
“One of the things that my son said to me, when he started to do the work [on forgiveness], one of the things that came up for him, he felt that he wasn’t loved,” Zampino said. “I said, ‘Oh my God, your father loved you, what are you talking about?’ He said, ‘I’m not talking about him, I’m talking about you.’ “
“I said, ‘You didn’t feel loved by me?’ So we had a conversation,” she continued, getting emotional. “He said that I didn’t care about his feelings. That’s what it boiled down to.”
“When he was little and he would fall, or something would happen, he’d be disappointed. Because I was around so many women, I would be like you’re okay,” she explained. “I would cheer him on. Instead of just sit in that space with him, and just be there, [and say] ‘How you feel? It’s okay to feel.’ “
Zampino, 54, said that around eight months ago, she was able to continue the conversation with her son and better understand his feelings.
“Maybe about eight months ago, doing my work, I said to him, ‘You’re so right. I didn’t care about your feelings, because I didn’t care about mine,’ ” she shared, noting that she “didn’t know how” to care about his feelings at the time.
“I was always rushing myself. You’ve gotta be stoic, you’ve gotta be tough, you gotta get through life, and this was him saying this,” Zampino continued. “I didn’t have the capacity to care about his feelings because I didn’t have the capacity to care about mine. I was on auto-pilot.”
Smith’s first child, Trey, is the only child of Smith and Zampino; the former pair divorced in 1995 and later developed an amicable co-parenting relationship.
In 1997, the rapper wed actress-singer Pinkett Smith, and the pair welcomed their first child together, son Jaden, the following July. Two years later, they welcomed daughter Willow in October 2000.
The Facebook Watch original series Red Table Talk airs Wednesdays at 9 a.m. PT/12 p.m. ET.
