Jeannie Mai Jenkinsnever thought motherhood was in her future, and she’d made peace with that.
“I was always — and still am — very protective of women and people who don’t want to have kids,” she says. “I don’t like the guilt and the pressure that’s placed on women to have children. Just because we’re women, it means that we have thechoice; it doesn’t mean that we have to have children.”
She says the reason she always was adamant about not having kids is because “I didn’t trust myself” to protect her future child from what happened to her at a young age.
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“As a child, when you are taken from things that feel good and whole and safe, it’s hard to see anything as trustworthy moving forward. I realize that the reason I didn’t want to have kids is because that feeling when I was a kid was so real and so damaging to the point that I’m 42 today still dealing with trust issues and confidence.”
Adds the mom-to-be, “It still scares me whether or not I can keep a kid safe from someone else who might hurt them.”
The star shares whatshe learned through counseling: “People who’ve really bad trauma, they’re constantly burdened with this fear that something bad is going to happen next. … What I’ve determined to do is face my fears and do everything I can to understand where it comes from so that I know it’s not real.”
Mai Jenkins recalls meeting Jeezy and getting to know him, saying that it “seemed relieving that there was no pressure on either side” to have children together (he already was a dad to two kids). Soon, she fell into a new kind of love with Jeezy that opened her visions of their life in the future, including building a family together.
In 2019, Mai Jenkinstold PEOPLE about having “anxietywith social situations and trust issues today that follow me everywhere I go” due to her past trauma.
RELATED VIDEO: How Jeannie Mai Overcame Being Abused at 9 — and Forgave Her Mom for Not Believing Her
At 16, Mai ran away from home, and shedidn’t speak to her motherfor eight years, though they’ve since reconciled.
She told PEOPLE at the time about her mental health struggles, “I know it comes from that feeling of not being safe in my own home for those five years and because the two people that I thought I could trust most let me down when I was young. These issues keep following me into my work life, my friendships and my relationships, and I’m sick of it. I don’t want to be 41, 44, 58 and still dealing with this heavy a– cloud over me because of what happened to me when I was 9.”
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, please contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go torainn.org.
source: people.com
