Why Gabrielle Union Is No Longer Afraid of Being a “Bad Mom”

At the same time, with so many cooks in the kitchen, Union wants to make sure they’re all bringing healthy ingredients to the table.

“We have committed to raising free girls, but we all have to be on board,” she explained, “which meant a lot of us got back into therapy to really get over some of the things that we didn’t heal from in our childhoods, that we started subconsciously passing onto [Kaavia].”

Once they noticed they were repeating certain patterns, Union said, “It’s like, ‘No.’ We have to heal first so we can be better village members for her, for Zaya, for ourselves, for each other’s children. ‘Cause we don’t have to pass on every single thing and that is our responsibility to [snipping motion] cut those cords when we are made aware.”

Union herself has been in therapy for three decades. Before she embarked on an intracontinental journey to trace the roots of her heritage ahead of her 50th birthday on Oct. 29, 2022, she passed the 30-year mark of her sexual assault at the age of 19, a trauma that admittedly shaped how she’d been navigating the world.