Nonhle Thema Opens Up About Her Public Meltdown & Finding Herself
Nonhle Thema || Image via: Instagram
Before there was Bonang Matheba, Boity, Minnie Dlamini-Jones, Pearl Thusi and all the South African ‘It’ girls you can think about today, there was Nonhle Thema who was basically killing it in the African entertainment space. Unfortunately her infamous tweets and lifestyle affected her then successful career.
Thankfully that is in the past now, Thema who has obviously matured and learnt from her shortcomings, recently opened up about her twitter meltdown, dealing with depression, finding God and also herself.
In a recent interview on Trending SA, the former Channel O presenter and actress who was the first person to have her own reality TV show in SA, disclosed:
”I think for me doing a reality show was necessary because the channel had positioned me to be the one who has to do the groundbreaking stuff so they can learn from me. I was basically used as the testing one…. I do wish I had gotten to know myself a little bit more before I had done a reality show because when I was doing one I was very young , I didn’t even know who Nonhle was… I was 28, 29, which was very young. I think you always start learning yourself after you are 30. I am fully fledged now, I know who I am, I know my space, I know what is my existence for and what I am trying to bring out to the world where as when I was younger, I wanted to try and please people. My reality show was about pleasing other people instead of actually being who I wanted to be”
Nonhle who has been open about her struggles with depression also talked about her public meltdown. She shared:
”When I said I was suffering from depression, you would never see that on O Access [her show] you would have never seen that during my Vuzu [TV station] days… I just had a void, I had a spiritual void, that I was suffering from because work became my life, work became my food but you can’t feed yourself with just work, your body needs other types of things to sustain itself… I was feeding myself in the fame monster because I was around famous people, I became famous, so if I am just feeding myself off that, I am definitely going to suffer so that’s when I suffered from depression and loneliness because people couldn’t hang out with me because I was so much of a star”
On finding herself and developing her spirituality, Nonhle Thema shared:
“I think I also, through my Twitter meltdown I realised that I was not happy. And the first thing you need to acknowledge about yourself is why you’re not happy. I had all the fame, all the TV shows, endorsements, fans, but I wasn’t happy. There’s a problem there. Money, looks, whatever. When I had that meltdown, I had to go back, and this was also after my daughter because I wanna be a healthy mother for her, I want my child to grow up in a happy home, I had to readjust and fix myself. For me, I had to take a spiritual journey by also removing myself from the limelight I don’t know if you remember but I did say something like ‘I retire, I’m retiring’ it was just me saying I wanna take myself out of this limelight, because I’ve been on a roller-coaster for 15 years of back-to-back working, international trips, local shows, V-Entertainment, face of this, face of that. I was the talk of the town for many years. I was kind of burnt out. So when I took that space I just wanted to go and reconnect with my creator, and find myself again in the human form, because I had found myself in a celebrity form. I can’t just be of existence being famous. There must be more substance to me.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/BaRU4RWHjv2/?taken-by=nonhle_thema
The media personality is now giving back to her community and even taking bible classes. Nohle Thema recently introduced a TV presenting, acting, public speaking, grooming and social media coaching school dubbed Talent Coaching Academy.
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