“It’s time that we show the people what we was cooking up.”
Gabrielle Union is opening up about her past experience with surrogacy.
The 52-year-old “Bring It On” actress welcomed her first and only child — daughter Kaavia — with husband Dwyane Wade in 2018 via surrogate, per Today.
Union is also a stepmother to Wade’s four oldest children — Zaire, 23, Dahveon, 21, Zaya, 17, and Xavier, 11.
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In an interview with Marie Claire, published May 7, Union described welcoming a child via surrogacy as “public humiliation” and offered a no-nonsense response to those who take issue with the process.
“Every single person's surrogacy journey is different,” she told the publication. “But for me, it felt like failure. My body failed. It just felt like such a f****** public humiliation.”
Union went on to describe surrogacy as a “cuckold.”
“Watching somebody do something I can't do. To be there for somebody else succeeding where I failed,” she explained. “It is a mind f*** for people who have had my journey and who feel similarly.”
Union adds that she often gets the urge to “judge and cast aspersions” upon those who don’t share her reality “because we all want whatever route we took to be the ‘right way.’”
As for those who take issue with surrogacy, Union says she leads with an “I don’t give a f*** attitude.”
“If I had the ability to do this myself, I would've,” she continues. “Your baby's here and your baby's awesome. My baby's here and my baby's awesome.”
Union says she will ‘never have peace’ with her surrogacy journey
Union has been open about her infertility journey in the past.
In her book “You Got Anything Stronger?,” released in 2021, Union revealed that she had been diagnosed with adenomyosis, which resulted in “more miscarriages than (she) could confidently count.”
According to the Cleveland Clinic, adenomyosis “occurs when tissue from the lining of your uterus grows into your uterine wall.”
Women with adenomyosis are known to have an increased risk of miscarriage, preterm birth, small gestational age and hypertensive disorders, per research published in Minerva Ginecologica.
"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,” Union wrote in her book.
Union was referring to Wade fathering a child with another woman while they were on a break in 2013.
"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 continued in the book.
“Even if he didn’t want to, I had to let him find someone who could give him what he wanted,” she wrote.
While she has since made peace with herself and her relationship with Wade — the couple have been married since 2014 — Union says she has yet to make peace with her surrogacy.
“No. I’ll never have peace with it, ever,” she said in her interview with Marie Claire.
“My yearning has never dissipated,” she added. “I was so ready for my surprise, but all the prayers that didn't get answered in the way that I thought made me more conscientious that my child is here.”
She did, however, clarify that she’s “very grateful” to her gestational caregiver.
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“It’s just one of those things where it’s such a personal journey that I may never know full peace with the coulda, woulda, shouldas,” she continued.
