How Do I Look? personality Jeannie Mai is speaking out for the first time since her estranged husband, Jeezy, filed for divorce last month.
Mai, 44, shared an Instagram photo of a note handwritten in a lined notebook on Wednesday, October 11. “Sometimes, you need to take a break and disconnect to heal,” read the note. Mai captioned the upload with a black heart emoji.
The post comes nearly one month after Us Weekly confirmed that Jeezy (real name Jay Wayne Jenkins), 46, filed for divorce on September 14.
In the filing, which Jeezy signed on June 15, the rapper claimed that his union with Mai is “irretrievably broken” with “no hope of reconciliation.” The documents also revealed that the former couple “are currently living in a bona fide state of separation.”
Jeezy is seeking joint physical and legal custody of the duo’s daughter, Monaco, 20 months, as well as the enforcement of the prenuptial agreement they signed ahead of their March 2021 wedding. (In addition to Monaco, Jeezy is the father of three children from prior relationships: sons Jadarius and Shyheim and daughter Amra Nor.)
Jeezy and Mai began dating in fall 2018 and announced their engagement in April 2020. Ahead of their wedding, Mai raised eyebrows by saying she planned to “submit” to Jeezy after they tied the knot.
“Going into my marriage, I want to submit to my man,” she said while cohosting The Real in September 2020. “That doesn’t mean that when he says, ‘How are we spending our money?’ or ‘Where are we moving?’ that I just say, ‘Yes, sir’ or ‘Yes, your honor,’ it’s not that. It’s a, ‘You know what? I think that we would do best here, I want to do this,’ and he takes the decision. He formulates it with our overall vision, and he leads us and I like to submit to that.”
One month later, Mai doubled down on her stance. “I am more of a powerful woman because I understand my power of choice, and I would like to appreciate my man’s role by giving him the ability to make decisions for us,” she exclusively told Us in October 2020. “That doesn’t mean he doesn’t factor in my thoughts and my wishes, and it doesn’t mean that I’m any less equal than him. It means that I’m saying, ‘I trust you.’”
Mai has also been outspoken about the responsibilities that come with having a partner with a different racial background than her own.
“I think when you look at the word ‘interracial,’ you should really look at it as ‘inter-responsible.’ It is a responsibility when you date outside of your race to learn about that culture because not everybody’s experience is the same,” she said during a November 2018 appearance on “Big Boy’s Neighborhood.”
While Mai’s recent Instagram post about taking time to “disconnect” and “heal” marks her first social media upload since her and Jeezy’s split made headlines, Jeezy shared a cryptic message the same day he filed for divorce.
“Too focused on who I’m becoming to focus on who’s not coming with me. ⛄️,” the musician captioned a September 14 Instagram carousel of photos of himself in front of a Mercedes sedan.
