Willow Smith cut her wrists after 'Whip My Hair' success

almost 6 years in NY Daily

Life as a 9-year-old pop star was taxing for Willow Smith — so much so that it led the grade-schooler to cut her wrists, she revealed Monday.

Smith, 17, spoke about her self-harm for the first time with mom Jada Pinkett Smith and grandma Adrienne Banfield-Jones on an episode of Jada's Facebook Watch talk show "Red Table Talk."

The episode's topic was surviving loss, and Willow jumped at the opportunity to discuss her lost sanity around the time she recorded her debut single "Whip My Hair" in 2010.

"I honestly feel like I lost my sanity at one point. It was after the whole 'Whip My Hair' thing and I had just stopped doing singing lessons and I was kind of like, in this gray area of like, 'Who am I? Do I have a purpose? Is there anything that I can do besides this?'" she recalled.

Smith said after a whirlwind tour and promotion cycle, things turned dark as her schedule cleared out.

"After all that kind of settled down and it was like a kind of lull, I was just listening to a lot of dark music and it was just so crazy and I was plunged into this black hole and I was like, cutting myself," she said.

The reveal shocked both her mother and grandmother, who said they'd had to clue.

"(It was) a long time ago. On my wrist," Willow said. "You can't even see it, but there's still a little something there. Totally lost my sanity for a moment there. I never talk about it because it was such a short, weird point in my life. But you have to pull yourself out of it. I honestly felt like I was experiencing so much emotional pain but my physical circumstances weren't reflecting that."

She said she snapped out of it one night after realizing she was being "psychotic," and hasn't cut herself since.

"That's good to freaking know! Willow I had no idea. I never saw any signs of that," Jada told her daughter.

"Whip My Hair" was a certified international success upon its release, and peaked at No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Elsewhere in the episode, Jada touched on her own experiences with surviving loss, namely the 1996 murder of her close friend Tupac Shakur.

"I remember my knees buckling and Will having to catch me. I was just in total shock," she said of the moment she learned of his death.

"That was a huge loss in my life. Because he was one of those people I expected to be here. My upset is more anger because I feel that he left me. And I know that's not true, and it's a very selfish way to think about it, but I really did believe that he was going to be there for the long run."

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