*Mary J. Blige bares her soul in the November issue of Self — opening up about her painful 2018 divorce, being sexually abused as a child and overcoming substance abuse.
When it comes to her ex husband, Blige admits she was in the marriage for all the wrong reasons. She even once credited him for leading her down the path of sobriety.
“Well, when I look back, I see that we all want what we want. And we want it to be the way we want it to be,” she says. “I wanted a savior. I’d been hurting so long, and so much, and so bad…He did not deserve that credit.” She says she put her ex in the driver’s seat not because he was equipped to handle it but because she wanted the fairy tale to be real.”
Blige says troubling visions she had of herself using drugs motivated her to kick the habit.
“We numb ourselves with drugs and alcohol and people and shopping and s***, to cover up what’s really going on inside,” she says. “You’re taking drugs so you can go out and feel courageous, or go out and feel beautiful or whatever. You’re doing it to cover up something.”
Blige got sober after having visions of herself overdosing or dying because of drugs, saying: “I’ve seen visions of what I would look like if I kept doing drugs,” she says.
“Everybody thinks they know everything, but nobody really knows. You only know what I tell you. And I don’t tell everything. I still can’t tell my mother everything that happened in that marriage. It took me a long time to tell my mom something that happened to me when I was smaller,” Blige says, referring to the childhood sexual abuse. “I was 33 years old when I revealed to my mom how I was molested. Thirty-three. Because I didn’t want to hurt her. And I wish I didn’t do it then, but I had to. “As public as I am, I’m real private…I’ll give you the juice and the truth, but not the stuff that’s going to kill me…I grew up in a neighborhood where we couldn’t tell everything. It would kill us. So you ‘know,’ but you don’t [know]. You know?”
Blige is open to sharing her journey because she’s been able to inspire other women.
“It happened because every night that I’m at these shows, I have at least four women say [to me], ‘You got me through the divorce that I was going through. That Strength of a Woman album? We was going through [your] divorce with you’…. I had to go through that in order to serve.”
MJB says her focus now is prioritizing herself.
“But right now it’s about me and little Mary. It’s like that’s my baby, my little girl. She needs my help…and I’m not going to ever let anybody hurt her again. She needs to live, she needs to play. She doesn’t mind her life being used to help someone else…. But I have to take care of her.”
You can read Mary’s full interview with Self, here.
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