The Tea on Taraji P. Henson: She Is Exactly Who You Think She Is
The actress on prioritizing her mental health, the beauty of being an HBCU graduate, and self-care and self-love going hand in hand.
At 5:47 PM on the dot, my phone rang the Kimmunicator beep tone and “No Caller ID” came across the screen. Although my mother always raised me never to answer a call from a number with no identification, I knew who this was calling me.
“Hey, it’s Taraji,” she said. She sounded at peace. Not like Cookie Lyon, Shug, or Yvette. This was Taraji P. Henson.
Before we jumped into our formal interview, I wanted to ask the Peace of Mind host how her own peace of mind was doing, considering the current social and political climate. I interviewed Henson the day after the Biden and Harris inauguration, but she acknowledged that her mental health was in good standing. “We have some hope. Things don’t look so grim now, so I just take the good and keep pushing,” she noted positively.
As the creator and co-host of Peace of Mind with Taraji alongside her longtime bestie Tracie Jade, Henson is no stranger to the topic of mental health. She’s been open in previous interviews and even her social media about her journey, but I wanted the advocate to take me all the way back to when she first felt a deeply rooted connection to the importance of mental wellness in her personal life.
“When I started feeling like I couldn’t feel that strong Black woman anymore. When I figured out that that was a trap for us and taking that title on. When I realized how unfair we were being to each other by trying to be inhuman,” she admitted to me. Henson, who is also the founder of the Boris Lawrence Henson Foundation, shares her explanation of the underlying toxicity phrases like “strong Black woman” and “Black girl magic” used against Black women, contradicting popular beliefs. She remembered when she first said it during her time at Howard University, a historically Black university crawling with Black excellence that gave her a “certain type of fire” when she began to learn about the true African-American history. “Going to an HBCU made me feel good about being a Black woman, a Black girl coming of age. It was a safe haven for me to live comfortably in my skin,” Henson reminisced
“As an artist, I was in a school where I could be Juliet. Shit, if I wanted to, I could play Othello or Henry VIII or III because I’m in a Black school and they’re not gonna hold me to race. Studying theater in an HBCU, they didn’t care how light you were, dark you were, how pretty your skin or your hair was or nothing. Can you hit your mark and make that row all the way in the back of this house feel what you are saying?”
During her time at Howard University, Henson recalled it being a time all about Black pride and the strength of the Black community. As a fellow HBCU graduate myself, I was excited to speak with the Washington, DC, native about the rise of historically Black institutions. “When Bill Cosby did A Different World, the influx of Black children running to college to feel like that,” she said referring to the fictional storylines and Denise, Freddie, Whitley, Dwayne, and Ron shot between the campuses of Spelman College and Clark Atlanta University. “He did a great thing with that show because there was a huge influx in enrollment at HBCUs, and it’s coming around again. We’re seeing it.”
As she began to settle into herself and create more memories through life experiences, her perspective and personal definitions of strength as a Black woman in this world began to modify. “As I got older and became a single mother, this ‘strong’ thing was tiring mentally. It drains you. It’s a lot. It’s too much,” she confirmed during our call. “I just hit a wall from trying to push through and cope in that dysfunctional way.” After looking within herself, Henson knew it was time to find a healthier way to heal from stress, anxiety, and poor coping mechanisms, which led her to therapy and reprogramming her way of thinking, positive and negative.
“It’s OK to need help. It’s OK to not know what to do next. All of that is OK. It’s OK if you’re tired and you don’t want to do it today. ‘I don’t feel like growing up today. I’m tired,’ you know?” she expressed to me passionately. She best describes her moment of realization as dysfunctional and hoped that she was making sense, but I assure her that it made perfect sense. We continue to talk about stress and its direct relationship with physical health and well-being. “Most times, because we’re too busy trying to be strong, we haven’t even been able to identify when we’re in crisis because we’re used to operating like that,” Henson said, referring to our constant on- the-go mentality and being too distracted by the hustle to acknowledge what’s going on with ourselves internally.
The Acrimony actress says the pandemic opened her eyes to the toxicity of the “strong” label on Black women, though she had already been slowly coming to that conclusion on her own. “I’m sure during the pandemic everyone let their guard down. You had no choice. Life forces us all to look within, and if you’re not, those are the ones that are struggling right now because they’re not taking this moment in time to see the blessing,” she said. Although everyone around Henson seems to be rushing and hurrying to get back to “normalcy,” Henson challenges them all with a question—what are you running from?
“Let me tell you something,” Henson said excitedly, after my admission to her that I had forgotten to take care of myself. “I have learned to say no. If this pandemic didn’t happen, I would’ve had five jobs right now. There would’ve been no summer. That vacation I had for my birthday, I wouldn’t have done that. I can’t even tell you all the shit I had lined up.” Her list of upcoming events includes speaking engagements, acting, and more all over, which wouldn’t have allowed Taraji to press pause on her life and take a well-deserved and needed rest.
Around last October, Henson publicly announced the end of her engagement to former NFL player Kelvin Hayden, but she assured me that it wasn’t all sorrow, anger, and heartbreak in the end. “There were things in my relationship I couldn’t see, you understand? I was too preoccupied,” she admitted to me. “It’s unfortunate that it didn’t last, but thank god we came to that decision now rather than later. We’re friends. We still like each other,” she laughed.
While the pandemic has given us room to acknowledge our mental health status, I wanted to ask the Hidden Figures star about the relationship between mental health and self-care. Self-love and self-care have become a trending topic over the last year, especially for Black women. “Your first relationship is with yourself,” Henson told me as she dispelled the mythical importance of fixing yourself up to find the love of your life. She believes that the notion of self-love and self-care is blossomed from putting yourself first and doing the necessary work within yourself that you’d like to be bestowed upon you. “Screw going to marriage counseling and couples’ counseling. How about going to counseling for yourself first? Love yourself first and have an amazing relationship with yourself first.”
