Thandeka King often plays strong and tough roles but her personal life beyond the glitz and the glam has involved a lot of dark episodes which required countless visits to the hospital.
In a recent interview on Trending SA, Thandeka opened up about going in and out of depression and how pursuing her acting career helped her out of a dark period.
"I used to suffer a lot from depression, every two years I'd be hospitalized and one of the things that my therapist always spoke to me about was to actually give a chance to what I'm gifted in, which is performing, and I was very scared to leave the comfort of the corporate industry, I was very scared because I had kids and I had responsibilities...2010 I couldn't, I shut down for the last time, I had my worst breakdown, I was gonna quit and I was gonna stay at home, and I was gonna be cool…” she said.
After getting the help of her former schoolmate Portia Gumede, Thandeka managed to get her first gig on Inkaba in 2012, but little did she know that she was set to fall into another dark episode as accepting that she was living her dream away from her children.
“The thing is, I thought when I was in this space, I thought I was good, but in 2016, I crashed again because I wanted too much out of myself and I was faced with the fact that I now am living my dream, I have to allow myself to live my dream, I'm away from my family and constantly feel guilty because I don't live with my kids and there's a lot of things falling apart but there's a lot of things happening, you just cannot strike the balance and you crash again..."
Thandeka is very adamant that accepting her calling of becoming a Sangoma opened her up to her talent, and she’s now happy that she gets to express that on different platforms.
"I'm happy I can actually talk about it without feeling guilty, without exposing myself, because I've been through it, I can still go through it. I had to fall down in a very deep, deep down in a very dark hole...the reason why I want to talk more about it is that people don't understand how dark it is…”
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Main image credit: instagram.com/@dawnthandeka_king