Mary J. Blige, the legendary superstar who won six Grammys, has gone through tremendous hardships throughout her life. Even though she went from rags to riches with her divine musical gift, the violence and poverty of her childhood home negatively influenced the people around her, therefore influencing her. Carrying those experiences with her throughout her life greatly factored in her once notorious temper tantrums, depression, alcohol abuse and cocaine use in her adult life.
Time has been a healer and she’s no longer in the dark place of her past. “You either learn from your experiences or go back and do the same thing, and I learned from my experiences,” Blige said in an interview with New York magazine.
“When I was five years old I was molested,” she says. “I remember feeling, literally, right before it happened, I just could not believe that this person was going to do this to me. That thing followed me all my life. The shame of thinking my molestation was my fault. It led me to believe I wasn’t worth anything.”
Blige also speaks out about her struggle with alcoholism. “It was bigger than me, and it was definitely going to kill me. So I was like, this is it, and let’s go. I remember sitting on my bed. I swear, I don’t know what death feels like, but I felt like my spirit was trying to leave my body.
The “Real Love” singer says it was actually her husband, Kendu Isaacs, who inspired her to get sober. “I stopped drinking,” she says. “It was will power. It was prayer. It was really hard. But, I cared so much about him, I didn’t want to be just this alcoholic burden on him. He doesn’t deserve for me to be some, you know, slum-bucket alcoholic, and so I took responsibility and I cleaned up, as much as I could. But it was hard.”
Since then, the couple has separated and are involved in a very public divorce. Mary said she “kept asking for respect in the relationship. Respect, respect, respect. But I wasn’t getting it back, so it felt like I was beating a dead horse. That’s when I have to move on to save myself.”
Bad childhood experiences have drastic effects on the mental health and emotional stability of an individual. It can cause them to either become hollow, depressed, spiteful, fearful, hot-tempered and/or full of unconditional hate and mistrust for their fellow man and self and make bad choices, which will lead to bad health.
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