Tess Holliday VALERIE MACON/AFP via Getty Images
Tess Holliday has managed to put her toxic marriage in the rearview mirror, but she knows she couldn’t have done it alone.
Tess, 38, exclusively spoke to Us Weekly about the difficult dissolution of her relationship with ex-husband Nick Holliday, from whom she split in 2019.
“It was so hard to push through it,” she admitted. “That was such a dark, dark time in my life and there’s parts of it that I don’t even really remember because I was just so focused on getting out of the situation.”
The supermodel — who recently partnered with Natural Cycles and Postpartum Support International to raise awareness about postpartum depression — married her ex-husband in 2015. Tess has full custody of their son, Bowie, 8, and she is also the mother of son Rylee, 18, from a previous relationship.
From the runway to the playroom, many well-known supermodels have learned to balance their careers with raising little ones at home. Gigi Hadid became a mom in September 2020 when she and then-partner Zayn Malik welcomed their daughter, Khai. (Hadid and Malik dated on and off beginning in 2015 before they split for good in […]
To help navigate the chaos, Tess turned to a new kind of coping mechanism. “Medical marijuana, man,” she gushed.
“I had never, ever used it before in my life,” she continued. “After I was done breastfeeding a year after giving birth, it allowed me to zone out and get through it a little bit.”
She also sought out the assistance of some professionals who ultimately helped her see the light.
“Therapy helped me immensely,” she said. “I had a postpartum therapist, and the therapist was like, ‘Hey, you know you’re in an abusive relationship, right?’ I was like ‘Oh, my God, I am.’ I was so out of it. It was having the therapist say that to me that snapped me back to reality.”
When it comes to future relationships, Tess vowed “to never do anything that doesn’t align with my heart and soul, and to listen to my gut.”
In accordance with her partnership with Natural Cycles and Postpartum Support International, Tess recorded a PSA as part of their “Is Mommy Okay?” series — which also features videos from Elaine Welteroth, Halle Bailey, Ashley Tisdale and Stephanie Beatriz — in which she gets honest about feeling like a “prisoner” to postpartum depression.
When Tess was asked to advocate for the cause, it was a no-brainer.
“Postpartum was extremely difficult for me,” she acknowledged. “I think for a while I was in denial with how bad my mental health was. Having help really empowered me to take care of myself, and I want that for others.”
With reporting by Amanda Williams
