*Amanda Seales says she’s exhausted with having to be the strong black woman all the damn time.
During an extremely candid interview with The Breakfast Club this week, the comedian and media personality revealed that she had a nervous breakdown in the spring, and spoke at length about the toll of having to maintain a hardened exterior as a black woman, particularly how it inadvertently and unfairly comes to define your outward personality.
“We’ve proven to ourselves that we can wear the cape,” she said. “But you reach a point where you’re really just craving softness. …A lot of us, we’ve come to realize our personality isn’t often times based on our core or our values, it’s based on what we’ve had to build up in protections to the situations that we’ve been in. I just don’t want to have to be that person no more. I don’t want to have to be hard no more.”
Seales also broke down the technical, wi-fi and COVID-19 challenges that surrounded her recent gig hosting the BET Awards. She got very real about “The Real,” and how she felt that the culture behind the scenes at the show was too toxic for her to continue on.
She talked about the fight to create a safe space for unapologetic blackness in this country, and specifically in Hollywood. She also spoke to fellow Black women about putting themselves first in relationships. “If his eyes light up when his boys call but they empty when its just yall….focus on yourself sis,” she said.
But Seales became emotional when revealing that she suffered a nervous breakdown in March. “I was in such a dark place,” she said through tears. “You just get to a point where you think like, I can’t change myself but the world hates me. And so then if I’m to continue to be myself in the world, then I’m going to struggle all the time. And that makes you want to kill yourself because it’s like, it’s never going to get better so what’s the point?”
Seales went on to explain how she’s learning to heal those emotions, crediting therapy, reiki, and boxing as important to her recovery.
Watch the entire interview below:
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