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Former My Wife and Kids actress Jennifer Freeman took to Instagram this week to share some honesty with her followers. The 33-year-old opened up about her ongoing battles with depression and finding purpose in her pain.
“I wanted to share with you guys something I’ve struggled with most of my life, and that is loving myself. I have been on a journey to loving myself for a while now,” she said. “It is definitely a journey. It is not a destination for me because it is something I am working on every single day. I just really got to a point in my life where I was really depressed. I just hated myself, I hated my life, I felt so alone. I just didn’t understand why my outside didn’t match up with how I was feeling inside. I just really couldn’t pull myself up out of it. I just asked God why do I feel like this? Why do I hate myself so much and why don’t I feel comfortable in my own skin? And He really took me on this process to restoring my identity. And so, I just really want to be able to share my story with you guys.”
Freeman has been through a lot of emotional ups and downs publicly. From 2009 to 2015 she was married to former NBA player Earl Watson, and there were accusations of cheating and infidelity during that time. In 2010, Watson filed for divorce from the actress after claiming she attacked him during a disagreement after she became suspicious of a text message he received at 11 p.m. He withdrew the filing soon after though in an effort to make things work and they reconciled in 2011 before going through a bitter divorce battle and splitting in 2015. They share a daughter named Isabella.
As their marital struggles played out publicly, the actress said she stepped out of the public eye to heal.
“Having a relationship just period, you go through your ups and downs. But living that out and being very public people I think is very hard,” she told HipHollywood in 2017. When you’re not in the limelight you can not have the judgment and opinions of people. You can go through your challenges without everyone knowing or asking or worrying about what people are going to think about you. That was really challenging for the both of us.”
When things ended, she started to do the work to emotionally get back to a good place.
“Being quiet and really taking that time to be with myself was really important and be with God and just look at myself inwardly and say, ‘What do I like about myself? What do I want to change about myself? How did I get to this point? And how do I not get to this point again and how do I grow from here?'” she added.
