Gabrielle Union felt “devastated” and “broken into pieces” after Dwyane Wade came clean about conceiving a baby with another woman.
The Deliver Us From Eva star recalls the life-changing moment in her new memoir, You Got Anything Stronger, sharing that she and the NBA star were “not in a good place” when the baby was conceived but were in a “much better one” when she learned the truth.
“To say I was devastated is to pick a word on a low shelf for convenience. There are people — strangers who I will never meet — who have been upset that I have not previously talked about that trauma,” Union writes.“I have not had words, and even after untold amounts of therapy, I am not sure I have them now. But truth matters.”
The Perfect Holiday star began dating Wade in 2008, and he fathered his now-7-year-old son, Xavier, in 2013, while he and Union were on a break. The retired Miami Heat player also fathered Zaire, 19, and Zaya, 14, as well as guardian to his nephew, Dahveon, 19.
Eventually, Wade and Union tied the knot in 2014 and attempted to have their own offspring, however, had challenges doing so after Union suffered multiple miscarriages. “‘You’ve done enough,’ he said. I looked at D with an instantaneous white-hot rage. Astonishment, really. I was fighting with my husband about what was best for my body? Did he really think that surrogacy and a baby were our chance to set it right? To rebalance?” Union, 48, remembers in her memoir.
“I said coolly, ‘You’re going to be the voice of reason now? Really? Really? Is that what we’re on today?’ He looked me in the eye. ‘As much as we want this baby, I want you,’ he said slowly. ‘We’ve lost too much in our relationship for me to be okay with encouraging you to do one more thing to your body and your soul.’”The “Bring It On” star says she felt 39-year-old Wade’s words were an “acknowledgment of failure” even though they were meant out of “concern.”
“Because at that point I would have sold my soul for a win. To get out of the endless cycle of loss. What was the going rate for souls? What was mine worth, anyway?” she further elaborated.
“The experience of Dwyane having a baby so easily while I was unable to left my soul not just broken into pieces, but shattered into fine dust scattering in the wind,” she explains. “With desperate hands, we gathered what we could to slowly remake me into something new.”
The couple successfully had a daughter Kaavia via surrogate in 2018. They celebrated 7 years of marriage this past August.
