I'm a trainwreck in the morning and a bitch in the afternoon.
Although I'm intentional about getting my mental health all the way together, I still have moments where I'm triggered without warning. Doing the work doesn't make me impervious to having bad days, and being damaged doesn't make me any less deserving of love, and Taraji P. Henson's testimony in the latest issue of SELF is a testament to this fact. She told the publication:
"I'm a whole black woman, whatever comes with that. All the emotions, all of the rage, the anger, the love, the hurt, the hope, the despair, the strength, the vulnerability. I'm all of that."
Along with menopause, mental health, and dispelling the myth of the "strong black woman", the Empire star opened up about how she, too, had to unlearn her insecurities to ultimately find love.
Jamie Lamor Thompson / Shutterstock.com
Last May, Kelvin proposed to Taraji with a Cartier bracelet and one helluva rock, but Taraji revealed that their journey to melanin matrimony has been bumpy at times. The actress explained that early on in their relationship, she believed that their courtship would be short-lived and had fears that her now 36-year-old suitor would move on to a younger woman in time. She explained:
"Whenever he would fall asleep, [I'd think,] 'Oh, you cheating on me?'"
Ultimately, these miscommunications drove the couple apart and they ended their relationship for some time. It wasn't until Kelvin showed up at her condo in an old school gesture of romance and shared his intentions in front of Taraji and the rest of her family and friends that the couple reunited. She explained:
"He had to suck in his pride and he still didn't stop. I said, 'That's my husband.'"
It's said that if you do the work, the man of your dreams will materialize, but Taraji isn't a believer in that theory. According to her, the work is never really finished:
"That's foolish to believe. How do you maneuver and do the work with this other person involved? That's the real work."
Along with healthy communication, Taraji says that therapy has also been instrumental in not only healing the relationship with her man but in helping her mend the relationship with herself as well. She explained:
"I had aligned all my chakras, and I still wanted to headbutt a bitch. The therapy came into play out of necessity. It was [a] time where I was like, 'Oh, I'm just not feeling like myself anymore,' and my son was going through his issues with becoming a young black male in America with no dad and no grandad. It was like, 'Okay, I'm not a professional. We both need help.'"
In an interview with BET, she also reminded us that our homegirls are not our therapists and emphasized the importance of seeking professional help.
"Your friends are not your therapists. They are very biased, and they have stakes involved in you. So sometimes their opinion can be skewed a bit. So that's why it's important to seek a professional, someone who studies human behavior and the human mind."
While Taraji has still been working to do some "rewiring" and unlearning, the actress says her man is patient AF and she's worth the fight:
"I'm grateful to God that I found a partner that I can work with, and that's what I prayed for. I said, 'I'm not looking for perfection, God. I'm looking for somebody who wants to do the work.'"
To read the full interview, click here!
Featured image by Jamie Lamor Thompson / Shutterstock.com
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Skylar sees things differently. At the time, she was shooting content on her iPhone. Temi came into the picture with a new perspective, an understanding of tech, and, eventually, a camera. “He doesn't give himself enough credit,” Skylar says. “He wasn't just my tripod. He wasn't just standing behind the camera and going ‘click.’ He was giving advice. He was giving me insight to how I could look at things from a different perspective. And I was like, 'Oh, he’s an artist.' I think it was maybe a heartbeat of that kind of energy of like, ‘Baby, can you take this picture?’ And it turned so quickly into, we're partners. We can work together in a way where we're advancing each other's creative thinking.”
The pair often says they’re two sides of the same coin. Skylar is an Aquarius. She attended art school, paints, and loves poetry. She’s more than happy to let the couple’s management firm and agency, Kensington Grey, handle their admin work. And, she loves to sleep in. Temi, on the other hand, wakes up early. He’s a Virgo. He loves a to-do list and regularly checks in on the couple’s brand partnerships spreadsheet to make sure everything is on track.
Because his storytelling was steeped in his love of technology, he didn’t always think of himself as a creative person. “Where I [am] the dreamer who wants to pluck things out of the sky and spend all day with my head in the clouds, Temi [is] so good at grounding me and helping me figure out how to make things make sense on paper. We just work together in such a complimentary way,” Skylar says.
It’s been more than six years since Brooklyn-based couple Temi and Skylar started dating, and nearly four since they cemented their working relationship. On TikTok and Instagram, the couple’s travel, fashion, and home content regularly rack up hundreds of thousands of views. They’ve worked with brands such as Coach, Aesop, Away, and Liquid IV, bringing their vibrant perspectives to every campaign they execute. Still, nearly two years since both Temi and Skylar committed to full-time content creation and creative directing, the couple says their romantic connection remains their priority.
“We told each other we would much rather go back to full-time jobs and preserve our relationship than to be full-time freelancers, barely getting a night's rest [and] barely kissing each other because we're so busy shooting,” Skylar says.
Working from home can make it hard to separate work from personal life for any entrepreneur. It can be even more challenging when your business partner is also your lover. Temi and Skylar had already used couples therapy as a tool to help them effectively communicate with one another. When they ran into challenges while working together, their therapist helped them set physical boundaries to help combat the issues.
"We told each other we would much rather go back to full-time jobs and preserve our relationship than to be full-time freelancers, barely getting a night's rest [and] barely kissing each other because we're so busy shooting."
“It actually took us doing very specific physical things to create boundaries between work and play in our relationship,” Skylar says. “So, for instance, we will only have conversations about work when we're out of bed or we're at the table or in the office. Initially, when we started, we had to light a candle to say that, 'Okay, this is a space where we're connecting, we’re not talking about work.' We needed really hard boundaries at the top. And then it became a little bit more organic.”
The boundaries have been crucial to implement, especially because the couple began working together so naturally. When the pair first met, Skylar was NY-based a social strategist for BuzzFeed and was using content creation to drive business to her lingerie company. She was shooting her own content. Temi was working for Microsoft in D.C. He’d recently traded in his DJing equipment for a camera. “I've always loved taking pictures,” he says. “Even when I was a kid, my African mother would wake me up at 3:00 a.m. [during a] party, and be like, 'Come take the family picture.'”
Growing up, Temi says he watched his parents support each other and be the true definition of partners. He knew he wanted the same for his own relationship. But, the couple also wanted to make sure they were being financially responsible. The pair didn’t quit their traditional jobs until they’d saved up two years' worth of their cost of living. And, Temi received his Master of Business Administration from New York University with the knowledge that it could either help him advance in his corporate career or be applicable to his business with Skylar.
Temi and SkylarCj Hart @hartbreakToday, they say their working relationship is more of a “quiet dance.” They still implement some of the boundaries they learned in therapy, but they also lean into their natural strengths and deep love for one another. When we speak, Temi has planned a date for the couple to see Princess Mononoke in 4K IMAX and added it to their Notion so they can factor it into their busy schedules. “I fully plan to date for the rest of my life,” he says.
Skylar says the couple doesn’t just wait for date nights to check in with one another, though. This often happens in the mornings, after Temi has made her peppermint tea and poured himself a cup of coffee. When they ask each other how they slept, she says, it’s not just a “nicety.” It’s a genuine question meant to foster connection.
“A lot of it happens during the day in the midst of work. We'll stop and we'll hug. Or we’ll slow dance in the kitchen,” she says. “Sometimes it's hard to set a whole date night when you have 7,000 things going on. So, we must grasp these moments and check in when we can. And I think it's become so organic to us that I actually didn't even realize how often we do it. But all day long, we're like, 'Are you good? I felt like your energy shifted,' because we're best friends, we just know. We just feel it happen.”
What’s better than being in love? Building wealth while doing it. Watch Making Cents here for real stories of couples who make money moves together.
Featured image by Cj Hart @hartbreak