Willow Smith says she lost her sanity during the peak of her childhood fame.
On the second episode of “Red Table Talk,” Willow, her mother, Jada Pinkett Smith, and grandmother Adrienne Banfield-Jones openly discussed loss. When asked about her biggest loss, Willow disclosed something that she had never told her family about.
“I would have to say … honestly I feel like I lost my sanity at one point,” the 17-year-old singer and model said. “It was after that whole ‘Whip My Hair’ thing and I just had stopped doing singing lessons and I was kind of like, just in this gray area of, ‘Who am I? Do I have a purpose? Is there anything, like, I can do besides this?’”
Willow released “Whip My Hair” in 2010 and it skyrocketed Willow to make — she was just 9-years-old.
She continued:
“After the tour and the promotion and all of that, they wanted me to finish my album,” Willow added. “And I was like — I’m not gonna do that. And after all of that kinda settled down and it was like a kind of lull, I was just listening to a lot of dark music, and it was just so crazy and I was just like plunged into this black hole, and I was, like, cutting myself.”
Jada and Adrienne couldn’t believe what they were hearing.
Willow said she had never told anyone except for one friend and even showed her mom an old scar on her wrist.
“I never talk about it because it was such a short, weird point in my life, but you have to pull yourself … out of it,” she said. “I honestly felt like I was experiencing so much emotional pain, but my physical circumstances weren’t reflecting that.”
We have to commend Jada for her compassionate reaction to Willow’s revelation. We can’t imagine that, as a mother, hearing your daughter say she used to cut herself is easy.
Watch the full episode below.
