Jada Pinkett Smith recalled the moment her daughter Willow Smith told her she was cutting herself and the conversation they had after the shocking revelation. (Getty Images)
Jada Pinkett Smith revealed the conversation she had with her daughter Willow Smith after the teenager said she began cutting herself when she was younger.
Smith told “The MOMS” hosts, Denise Albert and Melissa Musen Gerstein, that her daughter’s self-harm began in 2010 following Willow’s hit single “Whip My Hair.” She said her initial instinct was to make sure Willow was okay.
“We went through what happened and, in the moment, I realized as a mother you also have to give your children space to deal with their own shadow,” Pinkett said Tuesday, according to People magazine. “There’s lots of things that my mother didn’t know about me that she’s just finding out about me.”
“Our kids don’t want to burden us,” she added.
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Smith said she decided to focus on how Willow “got herself out [of cutting herself] versus what got her there.”
“I was most proud about that she could share it in the way she did, which let me know she had come through in a major way that she could put it on the table like that,” the actress said. “I wanted to focus on what [it was] that got her through.”
“I really talked to her about her powering side of her journey and give her all the praise in the world for that part instead of focusing on, ‘Why didn’t you tell me?'” Smith said.
Willow opened up in May on "Red Table Talk" about her self-harm that began in 2010 when she felt pressure to finish her album after releasing “Whip My Hair.”
“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,” Willow recalled. “It was just so crazy and I was plunged into this black hole, and I was cutting myself.”
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