Back in 2013, blogs ran rampant with the embarrassing story of Dwayne Wade getting another woman pregnant while dating the famous actress Gabrielle Union. The couple quickly came out with the story that the child was a “break baby.” Conceived while the couple was on a break. Later in the year Wade would propose to Union and send out lavish wedding invites.
Eight years later the couple is now married with kids. Not just Dwayne’s kids from his previous marriage but also the infamous 2-year-old Kaavia James Union Wade, who boasts 1.8 million Instagram followers.
Minus the now 7-year-old “break baby” Xavier Wade, Gabrielle and Wade’s relationship resemble that of a romance novel.
However in Union’s new book “You Got Anything Stronger, the Bring It On Star reveals that this fairytale would’ve never come about if not for being willing to conceive through surrogacy and to practice forgiveness.
The Deliver Us From Eva actress gave the world deeper insight into this period of their relationship, she shared a more candid account of true amount of heartbreak she experienced at the time ,in her new book, You Got Anything Stronger, which was published on Sept. 14.
When Dwyane broke the news to Gabrielle that Aja was expecting, she explained that they “were in a much better place” relationship-wise. However, it didn’t hurt any less to hear about it.
“To say I was devastated is to pick a word on a low shelf for convenience,” Gabrielle wrote. “I have not had words, and even after untold amounts of therapy I am not sure I have them now. But truth matters.”
Gabrielle, who previously revealed her adenomyosis diagnosis, explained that she and Dwayne were trying to have a baby of their own at the time. But her road to motherhood wasn’t an easy feat.
While Gabrielle was struggling to get pregnant, she said Dwyane told her, “As much as we want this baby, I want you…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 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 recalled. “We gathered what we could to slowly remake me into something new. There was no way to disguise where I’d been glued back together.”
She remembered thinking, “This woman is such a failure. And she has the nerve to be old. And she has the nerve to have a younger husband. And she has the nerve to stick with a guy who had a kid with somebody else.”
The L.A.’s Finest star admitted her “feelings weren’t originating from a healthy place” during that period.
“So much of what made the decision so difficult was that if I didn’t submit to a surrogacy, then I was convinced I needed to let Dwyane go,” she wrote. “Even if he didn’t want to, I had to let him find someone who could give him what he wanted. But I loved him.”
She continued, “Each day, he had worked to be forgiven, and I had chosen to love him and forgive him. And part of this journey of making peace with our love is also making peace with ourselves.”
Gabrielle said that had they not experienced their relationship struggles, “He wouldn’t have become the man he desperately wanted to be, and I would not become the woman I dreamed of being.”
The couple welcomed Kaavia James, now 2, in 2018 via surrogacy. Along with Kaavia and Xavier, Dwyane is also a father to Zaire, 19, Zaya, 14, and his nephew Dahveon Morris, 20, who he adopted in 2011.
“I can never know if my failure to carry a child put a ceiling on the love my husband has for me. Yes, I am Baby Mama number three, a label that is supposed to be an insult,” Gabrielle shared, adding, “If I am telling the fullness of our stories, of our three lives together, I must tell the truths I live with. I have learned that you can be honest and loving at the same time.”
As of lately Wade & Union have been on a world tour visiting the most beautiful vacation spots.
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Hearing this story and seeing the big FREE promotion that she’s getting to promote her book, really brings me to a deeper understanding about MARKETING. Life isn’t so much about changing lives. It’s more about being popular and letting that popular sell things for you. The best way to change the life of others is to LIVE YOUR STORY and aim for the top.
It also crossed my mind how badly men often hurt women, and each woman is forced to self-blame and heal herself. It’s like it’s the natural world order to break a woman’s heart so that she can find the higher parts of herself. I am seeing in this story how Dwayne and many other men get to live their very best lives, running through women, trying to figure it out, while women bare the pain of being with a man in the process of figuring out who he truly is.
Even more, there is something really healing about being able to watch Gabrielle Union’s journey as a human soul. Life can be so humbling. So many of us are delighted to see a successful woman get to have her cake and ice cream after all. Dreams do come true, fairytales are indeed possible, but you apparently won’t get either without some degree of pain.
My grandmother used to play this song when I was a little girl. My soul is recalling it now.
