The Childhood Baggage That Shaped Terrence Howard Into A Wife Beater:

Terrence Howard revealed that he had a lot of baggage from his childhood that shaped his personality as a man:

Via People: “I’ve made terrible mistakes throughout my life.” […] “I was dragging baggage with me that was crippling me mentally and physically. But I finally feel I can put that to rest. I can breathe again.”

Aside from seeing his Dad murder a man right in front of him when he was a kid, he was also beaten on the regular:

“My dad whooped me every day until I was 14,” says the [Howard], who grew up poor with three brothers. “Then he said, ‘The street will whoop you from now on.’ ” He was right. A sensitive child with “a big mouth,” living in the projects, “the kids would do horrible things to animals in the neighborhood,” Howard recalls. “I’d try and save them and take the beating instead.”

Mother’s 2008 Death Sparked Change For Howard’s Violent Ways

After his beloved Mother’s 2008 passing, Terrence said he started a long soul-searching process and began viewing the world differently and the roles that real men should play in their relationships:

“I was raised believing the man is in charge, but I’ve realized marriage should be an equal partnership,” says the actor.

Howard’s Current Wife “Settled Him” & He Proposed To Her FAST

By 2013, he was divorced for a third time and stumbled across love again when he met his current wife, and mother of two of his five kids, Mira Pak. Terrence and Mira confirmed that he was a changed man by the time they’d met and after years of reflecting and finding new ways to deal with stress, he was ready to put his violent past to rest:

“Two weeks after meeting Mira, I gathered up things associated with my past and found a nice hill and buried them all there,” he says. A week later, he proposed. “Mira settled me,” Howard says of his wife, 39, a former model and restaurateur. “Our marriage is effortless,” [Mira] adds. “Relationships are hard work, but we really don’t fight.”

Howard Now Handles Stress In An Interesting Way- Trees, Rescuing Flies, & More

Nowadays Terrence has vowed to be a better example to his five children of what a real father and man should be. And although he admits to getting stressed at times, he has now become a tree hugger-literally. Not kidding, “Lucious Lyon” really embraces trees to calm down:

“I’ll just watch a tree’s limbs sway back and forth or take my shoes off and put my hands on a tree,” he says. “It makes me feel part of the whole.” … “He refuses to kill a fly,” Mira says of Howard. “And we’re trying to teach our kids not to pick flowers.” “I know in those two weeks or month of a fly’s life, that’s 80 years for them. And we smash them so quickly. I hope if someone saw me trapped, some bigger creature would help me,” explains Howard.

Okay…didn’t see the whole tree hugging thing coming, but overall, we give Terrence Howard respect for at least manning up to his mistakes/flaws, in front of the world. What he did to his ex-wives was misguided and foul on many levels. But by him telling his story to the world at the height of his career, when he has everything to lose, just may grab the attention of someone else in a similar situation and help them to make the necessary changes they need to be better human beings. We also sincerely wish Howard’s ex-wives the best in their current, or future, relationships going forward.

A wise person once said, ‘You can learn a lot from your mistakes, when you aren’t busy denying them.’