Kim K, Keyshia Kaoir & Black Mental Health Awareness

When it comes to mental health in the Black community, we have made progress. The idea of therapy is no longer seen as an invasion of privacy or an admission of insanity. Black people have become more open-minded about therapy, healing past trauma, and honoring and ironing out their feelings. However, let’s be real, we still have a long way to go. For generations, we have been taught to pray it away, tough it out, or keep it to ourselves. The result? A culture where we silence honesty and pain, while shaming healing.

If you ask me, there should be more conversations about depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and trauma because they are all very present in our communities. We do not talk enough about how these struggles show up in our relationships: intimate, co-parenting agreements, friendships, and family. If we think or look back, many of us can recall a relationship with someone fighting invisible battles. You know, those people who mishandled you or made poor choices that just did not make sense and had a negative impact on you, others, or themselves. The battles that they were or should have been ashamed to acknowledge or own, and all while trying to hold everything and everyone together, or destroying everything and everyone in their path. Oftentimes, these mental and emotional health challenges are detrimental in relationships.

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An especially critical point to state is that mental health issues tend to become trending topics when celebrity couples like Kim Kardashian and Kanye West or Keyshia Ka’oir and Gucci Mane are involved. But the truth is, it’s not just them. Many of us have experienced heartache trying to love someone through the storm. It is something many women, particularly Black women, know all too well.

We have watched Kim and Kanye’s relationship burn on Beyoncé’s internet. Now I know a lot of us have a love-hate relationship with the Kardashians, and we’ve seen Kim run through a few men, but Kim and Kanye’s relationship seems like a master class in love, loyalty, and the limits of a woman’s commitment.

Kim stood by Ye through some of his darkest, most public battles with mental health—from his 2016 hospitalization after his breakdown on tour, to the infamous 2020 presidential rally where he tearfully revealed private family business, to the Twitter rants where he accused her and her family of trying to “lock him up.”

She tried to be the steady voice of reason while he spiraled in front of the world, often apologizing on his behalf. But even with all the love, resources, and patience she tried to offer, Kanye’s unpredictable episodes created chaos that no relationship could survive. Their marriage became a reminder that you can support someone, you can advocate for them, you can pray over them—but you cannot save them; they must commit to saving themselves.

At some point, even Kim had to choose peace, protect her children, and walk away from a love that had worn thin. Oh, and speaking of the children, Kim has recently been vocal about the fact that she no longer has a desire to co-parent with Kanye because of his actions and absence.

While there are some who want to point fingers at Kim, I get it. As parents, it is our job to protect our children, even if that means protecting them from the other parent. And with the way Ye is acting, I would not be eager to have him around my children. Honestly, this is a choice that protects both the kids and Kanye.

Another celebrity relationship that comes up in the conversation about mental health issues is Keyshia Ka’oir and Gucci Mane’s. While many of Gucci’s mental health issues played out before his marriage to Keyshia, it is obvious that she was in the trenches with him.

During a candid conversation on The Breakfast Club in October, Keyshia shared how she supported her husband through addiction, incarceration, and personal transformation. She did not sugarcoat the struggle; she spoke truthfully about accountability, growth, and the fact that love alone is not enough. And again, the critics had so much to say about how she helped him manage his episodes.

Both women, though coming from remarkably different worlds, echo a truth that too many women live in quietly: it takes an enormous amount of emotional labor and intelligence to love someone who is still trying to heal themselves. Oh, and the real tea is that some of them are not even trying to heal.

Baby, trust me when I say, loving someone with mental health challenges can test even the strongest heart. We’re expected to carry everyone and everything, our partners, our children, our households, and our own unhealed trauma. And when our strength is stretched thin by a partner’s mental or emotional instability, we often stay longer than we should out of loyalty, fear, or self-neglect, we call love.

The truth is that love will never heal what requires therapy and accountability. Unfortunately, many of us must learn the hard way. It is a level of nurturing that requires constant emotional monitoring — reading the room, predicting moods, walking on eggshells — all while trying to keep your own spirit intact.

Listen, there is no manual for loving someone through depression, PTSD, or mood disorders. But there are boundaries, and boundaries are sacred. And speaking of boundaries, one of the hardest truths to accept is that sometimes, you cannot save someone you love. And that’s not abandonment — that’s acceptance.

Do not overstay your welcome trying to love someone into healing. When the relationship starts to threaten your peace, your self-worth, or your emotional stability, it is time to pause and ask: Who is going to save me while I am trying to save them?

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