One afternoon this past summer, Gabrielle Union was sitting outside under the pergola (“or whatever it’s called”) behind her home when she noticed a hummingbird stuck in the rafters overhead. She grew more and more anxious as she watched the blur and beat of the bird’s wings keeping its body suspended midair while it struggled to find a way out. “I was watching this hummingbird and thinking, He’s up there and he’s able to fly, but he just keeps hitting his head against the top of this thing. I felt everything clench,” says Gabrielle, her makeup-free face set against a placid, blue West Coast sky in the frame of her Zoom window.
She had come off a good week, taking meetings about her newly relaunched hair-care line, Flawless, one of the many projects she is either steadfastly promoting or has in development. “But watching that hummingbird just fucked me up,” she says. “I couldn’t start my next meeting until we figured out how to help the little hummingbird, because if I don’t have at least a reasonable amount of peace at any moment, I can’t focus. It affects everything for me.” Finding peace has been something of a Sisyphean effort for Gabrielle, who, at 47, has successfully forged a mighty multi-platform career with an undeniable measure of gumption, grace, and resilience.
For well over a decade, the actress, entrepreneur, and star of L.A.’s Finest (the show’s second season launched on Spectrum in September) has spoken openly about her experience as a rape survivor, as well as the PTSD she still lives with, and which, Gabrielle says, has been “on 10” for the past several months. “The combination of a pandemic and this racial reckoning, alongside being inundated with [images of] the brutalization of Black bodies, has sent my PTSD into overdrive. There’s just terror in my body.”
She has also been candid about her years-long struggle with infertility and the numerous miscarriages she suffered before she and her husband, former NBA player Dwyane Wade, decided to work with a surrogate. Their daughter, Kaavia James (cutest of cute Instagram babies), arrived in 2018.
Gabrielle is also stepmother to Wade’s sons Zaire and Xavier, daughter Zaya, and nephew Dahveon. Her house is full, her family busy and large, and she parents and partners at home with as much clarity, fortitude, and accountability as she calls for at work.
In June, Gabrielle filed a discrimination complaint against America’s Got Talent judge and creator Simon Cowell—along with NBCUniversal and production companies Fremantle and Syco Entertainment—citing a “toxic” work environment during her experience as a judge. (NBC, Fremantle, and Syco issued a joint statement saying that an investigation into the allegations did not reveal any misconduct on the part of the show.)
The complaint opened a floodgate of other entertainment industry–related testimonials, as dozens of people reached out to Gabrielle with painful stories, catalyzing in her a sense of responsibility. “All of these people came through the door,” she says, as she mulls these new questions: “How do I create a larger movement to address all this trauma and all this harm? I can’t just swallow the information I now have.”
It’s true, she can’t go backward, but she also can’t move forward without peace of mind, the litmus for Gabrielle’s sense of health and wellness. And it’s not always easy to gauge. The tension she felt watching the hummingbird was a familiar sign of something bigger—a signal that she needs to step back and breathe, then buckle down for a minute. An unabashed proponent of therapy (a subject that’s often been taboo in the Black community), Gabrielle has relied on her own coping methods to manage her PTSD. “I break out my emotional fix-me toolkit, and I try to run through all the situations. I call it my ‘what’s the likelihood of X happening?’ method.”
It looks something like this: On the occasions she’s worried about everyday actions, like going shopping, her approach is strategic: “If I’m fearful about going into a store because I’m anxious about being robbed, I’ll make myself feel better by going to one where there will be witnesses to cut down those chances. It’s been this way since ’92. It’s just something I do; second nature.”
The year 1992 was when Gabrielle first sought therapy after her rape at gunpoint in the back of the Payless store where she worked. She was 19 years old. The assault prompted her to become an advocate for rape survivors, especially given her notably positive experience with the police in the aftermath, which she wrote about in her book We’re Going to Need More Wine.
“I am grateful I was raped in an affluent neighborhood with an underworked police department. And an underutilized rape crisis center,” she writes. “The fact that one can be grateful for such things is goddamn ridiculous…I know this now because I have spent time lobbying Congress and state legislatures about the treatment of rape victims. I’ve seen the worst-case scenarios, and they are devastating. Now, I can appreciate the care with which I was handled. Now, I know it rarely happens that way. And it really rarely happens that way for Black women.”
During this moment in America when we are talking about a racial reckoning—amid the pandemic that is disproportionately killing Black people, and protests against police violence after the killing of George Floyd—it bears reminding that whatever signs of progress are held up as justice, it really rarely happens that way for Black women. If it happens at all. Throughout history, Black women have been oversexualized, undervalued, cast as mammies or superwomen, and then always, at the end of the day, expected to save the world.
Seldom is there justice for Black women, almost never does our health and wellness matter in these prioritized efforts at systemic change. I’ve seen it, Gabrielle has seen it, all Black women have borne witness to this, over and over again. And we all manage this blatant and seemingly endless disparity differently. For Gabrielle—and in this particular moment—it’s the therapy that helped her manage expectations while allowing her to access her freedom. “I feel different in my body. I feel freer.”
Still, while cautiously optimistic about better and more equal opportunities in the future, she’s not sold. “I’m not going to factor in change I have yet to see,” she says. “For the most part, across all industries, you see the same power structure that existed before George Floyd. All of these initiatives that people are so excited about—if the people at the top haven’t changed, and they’re not interested in creating more space up here, how far are these people that we’re bringing in going?”
Staying engaged in this context, says Gabrielle, is about harnessing that hard-earned freedom and turning it into agency. Whether through her affordable hair-care products and clothing collection with New York & Co., or by being on the lookout for books and scripts by Black writers to adapt and produce, she is committed to holding space for other Black folks in her professional life.
“I want to make sure that everything that is working for me is available to as many people as possible.” Because she knows what Black feminists, of which she considers herself one, have always maintained: “We’re not free until everyone is free.”
She thinks back to the hummingbird and mentions other creatures—rabbits, mice, bees—living in the natural habitat she’s surrounded by since moving outside of L.A. a few months ago. The hummingbird made it out from the rafters, but the bees are not faring so well, says Gabrielle, who’s allergic to them.
“Normally, I would be like, ‘Bees!’ But I’ve found a weird peace being surrounded by a lot of them. Yet they’re dying. All day long, I find these dead bees. I’m feeling—I won’t say grief-stricken, that might be overselling it—but I’m mourning our little bee brothers and sisters.”
Gabrielle pauses before sharing a small epiphany. “I think I was brought to this home for a reason. Finding that peaceful balance with nature, and understanding that we moved into their space,” she says. “This is so not my normal language, but I don’t have other words to describe it.”
There’s an ease in her discomfort, though, as she gives in to the wonder of it all. “Maybe it’s just about looking at a bee or a hummingbird that’s trapped, and thinking, There’s another way, and I’ve got to find it, because my soul won’t rest until I figure it out.” Gabrielle’s peaceful pursuit: a work in progress, always.
Photographed by Djeneba Aduayom Styled by Thomas Kikis at The Wall Group. Hair: Larry Sims at Forward Artists for Flawless. Makeup: Sir John at Management + Artists for L’Oréal. Manicure: Thuy Nguyen using OPI at A-Frame Agency.
This article appears in the October 2020 issue of Women’s Health. Become a WH Stronger member now.
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