Source: Facebook Watch/Peace of Mind With Taraji P. Henson / Facebook Watch/Peace of Mind
Taraji P. Henson and Angela Simmons will have an emotional heart-to-heart about their personal experiences with domestic abuse on a new episode of Peace of Mind with Taraji this week.
The episode, which is titled “Why Do Women Stay in Hurtful Relationships?” finds The Growing Up Hip Hop star answering the difficult question. Simmons opens up about how the mental and physical abuse from her violent relationship impacted her.
“I dealt with somebody with a temper and I didn’t know. It started off as small things, and next thing you know, stuff is getting thrown at me, I’m against the wall, or I’m jumping out of moving cars because I’m afraid or I’m calling cops,” the 34-year-old says in a sneek clip from the forthcoming show. “I never thought in a million years I was going to be that person. When I was going through it I was like, this is insane. And at the same time you’re not wanting to tell no one around you because you’re in a relationship with the person and you don’t want them to judge them. In a weird way you’re still guarding them but going through it yourself.”
At one point in the episode, Henson asks Simmons how she decided to walk away from her tumultuous relationship to which the Empire star then details her very own harrowing experience escaping abuse.
“Sometimes as women what we do is we fall in love and we go, ‘You know what? I’ll fix it later. For me, it was when blood was drawn…” The Baby Boy star tells Simmons, according to Hot 97. “because it started with the bruises and grabbing, things like that. And then once the fist came — I’m missing a piece of my lip to this day — that’s when I knew I had to go,” she added.
Elsewhere in the interview, Henson tells viewers about how she never wanted her emotional struggles with abuse during her childhood to affect her son, Marcell Johnson.
“I don’t want my son around this,“ she says while offering advice to domestic abuse survivors on how to turn their lives around. “You can find yourself in any bad situation in life. Guess who it is up to to get out of it? You. That’s it. If you’re not chained to a wall and no one has a gun to your head and says, ‘I’m going to shoot you,’ where’s the power? You have the power.”
The full episode will air on Oct. 25 on Facebook Watch at 9 a.m. PT/12 p.m. ET. Will you be watching?
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