Pain isn’t a Pathway to Love

There’s nothing noble about self-neglect.

When Life Coach and Personal Trainer Sabrina Parr announced the end of her one-year engagement to retired NBA All-Star Lamar Odom, half the internet let out a hearty, “Told you so!” Given Odom’s very public and very problematic marriage to Keeping Up with the Kardashian’s star, Khloe Kardashian, people appeared apprehensive when the pair made their very public engagement announcement. You could say they saw it coming. Not only did Odom’s first marriage expose his affinity for women who weren’t his wife and pharmaceuticals you couldn’t purchase from the pharmacy, his post-divorce recovery appeared to be equally extravagant.

I got to hand it to Khloe, though; she gave it the ole college try. But Lamar’s problems proved too much for her to manage, something Black women often jokingly attributed to her missing melanin. “A Black woman would’ve been got that Black man together.”, read the comments under Khloe’s post-divorce pictures. We were proud of our ability to endure the Black man’s pain to the extent that what fractured other women fueled us. “Who better equipped for him than us?” Black women asked. Enter Sabrina Parr.