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Kelly Price says when she decided to file for divorce in 2015 and split from husband Jeffrey Rolle after 23 years of marriage, she didn’t necessarily get the support she was hoping for.
During a conversation for Out Loud with Claudia Jordan, Kelly spoke with Claudia and crooner Musiq Soulchild about a range of topics. One of the things addressed was Claudia’s feeling that we judge one another too harshly, not really knowing what could be going on behind the scenes. That’s when Kelly shared her own experience with being harshly judged during a vulnerable time.
“I actually got ripped up online. I got dragged by women when I walked away from my marriage,” she said. “Women literally were saying, ‘How effed up could she be that after twentysomething years, you couldn’t figure out how to make it work?'”
Price said she watched a number of women call her a “failure,” not realizing that she was leaving a marriage that had proven to be abusive and filled with disrespect.
“I don’t even know who this woman was who after maybe 30 or 40 insults straight about what woman I must not be said, ‘I find it really interesting that all of these sistahs are in this thread ripping this woman to shreds because she walked away from a relationship that was tearing her down and wasn’t building her up,'” she said. “I don’t know who this person was. I don’t know if it was a fake account or what. But this woman actually said, ‘First of all, she’s a sistah so we should be lifting her up. But secondly, let me help you. If you’re going to tear her apart, you should probably at least know a little something about the relationship because the relationship was an abusive one and it was very public about the way she was being treated and there were lots of other women and lots of other kids and she always put on a face.’ The music I wrote was to empower women, while I was going home, and taking everything I knew how to take.”
The “Friend of Mine” actress has no regrets though when it comes to ending that long-term relationship, saying she had to look out for herself for once.
“What was powerful about leaving that relationship was I finally decided to choose me. I had never done that,” she said. “It’s okay to choose you. You’re supposed to choose you.”
Hit the flip to learn more about how her marriage came to an end, and see photos of a liberated and happy Price post-split:
