Tyler Perry Turns 57 With a Raw Letter About Trauma, Suicide Attempts and Healing

Tyler Perry celebrated his 57th birthday by sharing an eight-slide Instagram carousel titled“The Journey!!”and it is far from a typical celebrity milestone post. In the letter to his younger self, Perry writes about being raped by a neighborhood woman and sexually abused by a man at his church as a child. He also reveals he attempted suicide twice, once by slitting his wrist and once by taking pills, and describes years of severe anxiety alongside his mother’s suffering, his best friend’s murder and repeated racial profiling by police.

The post does not stop at the pain. Perry recounts moving to Atlanta, working two jobs, sleeping in his car and pushing his stage plays for seven years before they broke through. Even after finding enormous success, he says he lost nearly a decade to overwork, then fell into depression and heavy drinking after his mother’s death. He credits therapy in his forties, a PTSD diagnosis and fatherhood with bringing him healing for the boy he once was.

Celebrity friends including Octavia Spencer and Cocoa Brown reacted in the comments, and his line“I am the man that my mother raised me to be”has been shared widely. Perry’s openness about abuse, homelessness and mental health offers a rare look behind one of Hollywood’s biggest success stories. What is one thing you would tell your younger self if you could?