Source: Luis Alberto Rodriguez
Regina King experienced grief of a lifetime when she lost her son Ian to suicide in 2022. Now the actress, producer and advocate is opening up about her healing journey and more in Harper’s BAZAAR’s Possibility issue.
The actress opened up about her grief journey on Good Morning America, but now she’s giving us deeper insight into how she’s navigated the last two years since her son’s untimely death.
Regina King On her son’s struggle with depression:
King reflects on Ian’s light, and his ability to smile through the pain. “When I look at all of the work and everything that we and Ian put into trying to move through the depression … I mean, he’s pure joy and pure light,” she says, slipping for a moment into the present tense. “But he was struggling so much. We knew. We knew what we were going through, but he never presented that way. That’s why I know that a smile doesn’t always mean happy. He would never not let whoever he was with feel like they were the most special person in the world. So for me, I’m like, ‘Man, he was putting a lot into things, a lot into people, a lot into this world, and yet it wasn’t translating back,’ ” she says.
Source: Luis Alberto Rodriguez
Regina King On feeling the absence of her son, Ian, after his death:
Despite the pain, King says she would choose her son in every lifetime. “If I was told, ‘Do you want to do this again, but it’s going to be exactly the same?’ I would say yeah, just because of how much Ian gives me,” King continues. “But right now, it is me trying to better understand this new relationship with Ian that the universe has chosen. We always talk about spirit: They’re always with us in spirit. But his physical absence is so loud that it’s hard to sometimes tap into that spiritual connection.”
Source: Luis Alberto Rodriguez
On being able to tell Shirley Chisholm’s story:
Source: Luis Alberto Rodriguez
The actress has been making her rounds to promote Shirley, a film documenting Shirley Chisholm’s experience as the first Black woman presidential candidate. In the issue, she discusses the importance of telling Chisholm’s story.
“We’d both had too many experiences where friends had never heard of Shirley Chisholm,” King tells me. “We all know women who roll up their sleeves and are able to go toe-to-toe with men—Black women,” she says. “We know they exist, but we don’t get to see them out in the storytelling space,” she explains. “Shirley understood the game of politics, even though people’s lives were not a game to her.”
You can read the full issue here.
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Regina King Talks Channeling Shirley Chisholm’s Resilience In The Netflix Film, ‘Shirley’
Regina King Opens Up About Her Son Ian’s Depression In Harper’s Bazaar’s Possibility Issue was originally published on hellobeautiful.com
