HOW A LIFE-CHANGING EVENT IN YOUR LIFE FORCES YOU TO GET THROUGH YOUR PAST TRAUMA

It seems as though it’s the season of divorce in the live of Hollywood couples. Couples like Jodie Turner Smith and Joshua Jackson, Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner, as well as Jeannie Mai and Jeezy are headed for splitsville. The sad part about it is that all these relationships and marriages dissolution have children involved. For this specific blog post, I’d like to discuss Jeannie Mai and Jeezy’s breakup. It’s an interesting one, as well as somewhat tricky and confusing.

I’ve been a fan of Jeannie Mai since her days on ‘The Real’, which began airing in 2013. She was my favourite out of her co-hosts, which included Adrienne Bailon and Tamera Mowry-Housley. Jeannie’s perceptive was always the most interesting to me. She was fun, energetic, and outside of a few mishaps like telling her co-hosts that she liked ‘black meat on the side, meaning she only saw black men as one night stands only, she always had very intriguing points of view on what the topic of discussion was.

The panel on ‘The Real’ included women from different backgrounds, ages, and lifestyles. Jeannie was someone who represented the Asian culture on the show. She was also married at the time (not to Jeezy), and she and her husband at the time, Freddy Harteis, decided not to have children. On the show, Mai was a strong advocate for those who decided for themselves to live a child-free life. It seemed as though she was the one who was absolutely sure she didn’t want to have children, whereas he did. “I guess it’s just really hard because I can’t just have a child for another person, and you don’t have a child to save your marriage,” Jeannie shared while they were still together. .

After 10 years of marriage, the couple ended their relationship in 2017. It was a bitter divorce. Neither of them had nice things to say about each other, though Harteis was too harsh on the matter. She said she regretted getting married to him, and he said he upgraded from trash when she announced she was pregnant with Jeezy’s baby. Mind you, she’s still paying him alimony, so he calls the woman he supposedly loved and some who still pays for his lifestyle ‘trash’. Since their divorce, Jeannie had her baby, and her ex-husband had 3 children with his second wife.

It seemed fairly odd that Jeannie Mai changed her mind about having children. She seemed very sure of her decision when she spoke of it on ‘The Real’, and it didn’t matter to her whether or not she got backlash for it from viewers or society in general. And yet, she changes her mind as soon as she gets serious with someone else. Maybe it was that she didn’t want to have a child with the wrong person, and deep down, she knew her (first) ex-husband was the wrong person to have a family with.

Back in 2021, while pregnant with her first child, Jeannie Mai opened up why she changed her mind about starting a family on her YouTube show, ‘Hello Hunnay’. She admitted that being sexually abused as a child by a family member starting at the age of 9, which caused a 10 year friction (might not be the right word for it) between her and her mother as her mother didn’t believe her when Jeannie opened up about the abuse, caused her so much trauma that she didn’t believe motherhood was for her or that she’d be a good mother in the first place. During her pregnancy, she explained:

“As a child, when you are taken from things that feel good and whole and safe, it’s hard to see anything as trustworthy moving forward. I realize that the reason I didn’t want to have kids is because that feeling when I was a kid was so real and so damaging to the point that I’m 42 (2021) today still dealing with trust issues and confidence. It still scares me whether or not I can keep a kid safe from someone else who might hurt them (the child). (‘m so thankful because I’ve never felt this ready. I’ve been through so much, and I’ve survived and I’m shining. My heart is ready. I was meant to be a mom.”

When she announced she was pregnant and proudly displayed her bump on ‘The Real’, Jeannie added,

“You know, I was like, I know exactly what I want, I know exactly what kind of woman I want to be, and I always said, ‘I’d never be a mom,'” she said. “And there’s so many reasons now that are coming to fruition as to why I would have said that then, but I do know that you never say never, and that love can really change you. I think the reason why it’s such a big deal is because Jeezy made me realize that I’ve never really felt safe in my life, you know? I’ve never really truly felt safe. And of course, it has to do with things that happened when I was younger, but when you know what feeling unsafe is like, that becomes your world. And falling in love with Jeezy, meeting someone who also didn’t feel safe in their life, we began to really create a place where our happiness spelled out what safe looked like around us. So, as soon as you feel safe, in a healthy relationship, all of a sudden you start having visions and dreams and for both of us at the same time, it would be becoming parents, having kids.”

I watch ‘Hello Hunnay’ practically religiously, and in one of her videos, Mai opened up about her divorce from her first husband, and what it taught her. In summary, she said that her divorce forced her to work on herself and begin a journey of self-reflection and self-love. With that, she began her journey of healing. As previously mentioned above, Jeannie’s reasoning for deciding not to have children was the trauma she endured as a child that had an effect on her as an adult. In hindsight, it was her divorce that forced her to work on healing from that trauma. And then, meeting her second husband, Jeezy, made her realize that she wasn’t alone in the trauma, and found someone to connect with through it, which made her change her mind about having children. It wasn’t about the man she was starting a family with, but rather her relationship with herself and what she thought of herself.

I can truly understand where she was coming from. My previous post gave more of an insight to own trauma and the effect it had on my own life, particularly in my friendships as the previous post was all about why everyone should ‘edit their friends’. My trauma didn’t just have an effect on my friendships, though, but my personal life as a whole as well. Before I met my husband, I knew nothing about relationships. I never had any. I was totally fine with. I needed a relationship. I never wanted one. I had flings. No strings attached flings. They last no longer than 6 months. It was perfect…for me.

When I initially met my now-husband, I had a boyfriend. I didn’t care about him at all. He did somethings to me that were unforgivable, and I was going to break up with him anyways. I didn’t feel guilty cheating on him, nor did I feel guilty for leaving him, which was an entire process. I was relived when my ex was out of my life for good. Throughout our short relationship, he became abusive to me. He hit me on my birthday. That was my breaking point and the night I said myself that I needed to get out of that situation. But I needed to be careful, for I knew that if I wasn’t, I could get hurt further. So I started cheating on him. I slept around with both men and women, and I did everything I could to avoid having any contact with my now ex-boyfriend. Two months later, I met my husband.

My dating journey with my husband wasn’t easy. I was cold and distant with him in every sense of our relationship. It took me YEARS to fully open up to him. It wasn’t that he was a bad person. On the contrary. He an enormous amount of patience with me. He still does. It takes a certain type of man to 1. be in a relationship with a disabled person and 2. be in a relationship with a person who was sexually assaulted. I’d been trying to get to know of more stories like mine that I could relate to and resonate with. One particular story made me appreciate my husband’s presence in my life even more. The story goes as follows: A woman had been raped while she was out alone at night. Her boyfriend tried to help her cope as much as he could, but she wouldn’t allow him to be anywhere close. In the end, he broke things off with her.

My husband was there with me when I watched a video clip detailing story, and he immediately said that he felt the same exact coldness that the boyfriend did. Except the difference was that my husband never left even though he had all the reasons in the world to so. I would’ve completely understood if he did decide to leave, because that type of trauma never truly goes away. To the person that did the deed, it’s just one night of fun and having that feeling of control. To the victim, it’s a lifelong battle with the body and mind. And again, it all comes down to my husband’s patience.

With all of that being said, I understood where Jeannie Mai was coming from when she was married to her first husband and was absolutely sure she didn’t want to have children. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to have HIS children. It was that she wasn’t okay with herself to have children and take full responsibility for the life of another person. It took a big life change such as divorce to really put all the work in on herself to fully be okay.

That’s all it takes for anyone to realize they need to put an effort on themselves. For me, that big life change that made me really work on myself and work through my trauma was being diagnosed with epilepsy, which is why I’ll be forever grateful to have that experience of living with a chronic illness. I had my most difficult years living with epilepsy, but those most difficult years forced me to do the necessary work on myself. The most important lesson I had to learn was that no one in the world could ever help me through my trauma. No matter the amount of support I may get from those closest to me, the only person that could ever help me is myself. That comes with self-love, self-awareness, self-respect, and perseverance. I went from not ever wanting to settle down to being in a healthy relationship for more than a decade and having a child. I never thought in a million years that that what my life would look like. The old version of me would NEVER! But new version of me couldn’t be happier.