The 44-year-old entertainer says she's 'dedicated to being the best mom and best person' she can be.
Tamar Braxton is reflecting on her life, one year after her suicide attempt. The 44-year-old entertainer was hospitalized last July amid a quiet battle with severe depression. Among one of the hardest moments in her life, the singer admits that after surviving the incident she chose to change her life.
"That time of my life was so dark and so heavy. I didn't see how I was going to come out on the other side," the singer tells People in a new interview released on Wednesday. "I didn't even know that there was another side. But I chose to change my life."
"Most people think, 'Oh, she went to a hotel, probably took a bunch of drugs, was on a binge.' It didn't happen like that," she adds. "It was just everyday life, trying to figure out how to get through the day and then …"
The former Braxton Family Values star admits that being in front of the camera also took a toll on her mental health. She claims that being molested as a child, and the events being brought up in a 2018 taping without her consent, "was very traumatic for me."
While a WE tv spokesperson declined to comment on Braxton's statements, per the magazine, they "noted that her past revelations about childhood sexual abuse never aired and were not discussed on Braxton Family Values."
Meanwhile, Braxton says she also didn't like the way she was being portrayed on TV, a single mom with rocky relationships.
"After a scene, I'd watch it back, and it would be nothing like how it went down," she claims of her special, Get Ya Life!. "They started piecing words together and sentences. I just thought that wasn't necessary."
"I wanted to do positive television," she adds.
Braxton also touched on how she felt ending her life would be better for her now-8-year-old son Logan, expressing, "I didn't want to continue being a disappointment for him. How can his friends' parents respect me if this is what they see every day?"
"I wouldn't let my kid go over to a child's house if this is what was portrayed on television. In my sickness, I thought that if I can take the embarrassment out of his life, maybe he would have a chance to have the best life," she continues, saying that know she knows "that that probably would have destroyed him, that the best life that I can set for him is to be the example, get counseling and show him how to communicate."
Above all else, she still loves television, "but I'm definitely not ever doing another docuseries about my life." For now, she's "dedicated to being the best mom, the best person I can be."
After her hospitalization, she and then-boyfriend David Adefeso ended their relationship abruptly, with claims of domestic abuse. She also stepped away from her family’s reality show, Braxton Family Values, claiming working for WEtv was the source of her depression, comparing her contractual obligations to slavery. Braxton's sisters and mother, however, continued to film the show (including coverage of the suicide attempt), and the network aired a pre-shot spinoff, Get Ya Life!, in the weeks after the event.
ET also spoke with Braxton last month, where she shared that the biggest lesson she learned after surviving her suicide attempt was to "keep going, move forward."
"I keep thinking about when I felt so dark and so lost and so alone, if something would have happened to me, I keep remembering that tomorrow would have gone on anyway," Braxton said. "So, why not keep living? Keep pushing forward? Even when you don't understand, you keep pushing forward. And I'm so happy that I did. I'm so happy that I'm doing the work -- and I've done so much work -- because I can live to tell about it and I can also live to help someone else who doesn't have the tools that I now have. So, keep pushing forward."
Hear more in the video below.
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