Tamar Braxton confirmed Thursday that she attempted suicide earlier this month and blamed reality TV culture for harming her mental health and bringing her to the point where she attempted to kill herself.
“I believed that as a black woman, as an artist, an influence, a personality that could shape my world, and with whom I thought they were my partners, they could help me share my world,” said the singer and reality. The television personality wrote in a long letter posted on social media.
“Over the past 11 years, promises have been made to protect and portray my story, with the authenticity and honesty I have provided,” he continued. “I was betrayed, taken advantage of, overworked and underpaid.”
Braxton, who has a new reality series slated to come out in September, appeared on WeTV’s “Braxton Family Values” from 2011 to 2019 and “Tamar & Vince” from 2012 to 2017, competed on CBS’s “Celebrity Big Brother” in 2019 , and co-organized the daily syndicated chat show “The Real” from 2013 to 2016.
“Tamar Braxton: Get Ya Life!”, Which will debut on July 30 on WeTV, was postponed to a release date on September 10 after the singer and reality television personality was unconscious by her boyfriend David Adefeso. in a Los Angeles hotel room on July 16. She was subsequently hospitalized.
“It was only the grace of God and his mercy in my attempt to end my pain and my life that I am here to use my voice,” he said in his statement on social media.
“More than 2 months ago I wrote a letter asking to be released from what I believed was excessive and unfair,” Braxton said, referring to a letter he reportedly sent to WeTV executives. “I explained to him in personal detail the disappearance he was experiencing. My cry for help was totally ignored. However, the demands persisted. “
She said that although she strived to be a good mother, daughter, partner, sister and person, the only thing that mattered was how she was portrayed on television.
Tamar Braxton is presented at the BET Awards in 2015.
(Chris Pizzello / Invision / Associated Press)
“He witnessed the slow death of the woman I became, which discouraged my will to fight. I felt that I was no longer living, I existed for the purpose of obtaining profits and ratings from corporations, and that killed me, ”he said.
In a letter sent to WeTV executives by Blast on June 2, Braxton reportedly compared them to the “cruel white masters who once chained our ancestors.” She warned them that she was suicidal, accused them of exploiting secrets she was not yet willing to share, and blamed them for pitting her family members against each other, Blast reported.
The 43-year-old woman, who has given herself the middle name of “Slave” on her Twitter account, said that the pain she has suffered in the past 11 years “slowly ate away my spirit” and attributed her mental illness to “toxicity , systematic slavery that inhabits [on] TV.”
Braxton lamented the lack of a union or formal representation to protect those who appear on reality shows. Executives “promise us opportunities but produce exploitation, which has only developed a poor representation of blacks in the entertainment world,” he said.
An executive producer on 26 episodes of “Braxton Family Values” in 2018 and 2019 and an EP on “Tamar Braxton: Get Ya Life!”, She vowed to “use my voice and experience to be an ally to every black and brunette person who has suffered the continued exploitation of reality shows. “
Braxton concluded by stating that he would focus on finding his happiness “through professional treatment, for the good of my heart, Logan, whom I forgot in my time of anguish and despair.”
Logan, 7, is her son with ex-husband and manager Vince Herbert, whom they parted with in 2017. She and Herbert appeared in “Tamar & Vince” when they were together.
