‘Teen Mom 2’ Star Leah Messer Reveals How She Overcame Suicidal Thoughts: ‘My Daughters Need Me’

Sharing her story. Teen Mom 2 star Leah Messer reflects about a painful memory in her new memoir, Hope, Grace & Faith, revealing she thought about taking her own life before having an epiphany. The TV personality referenced one night in particular where she got into her car with “tears streaming down [her] face.”

“I glance back over my shoulder at the three, crumb-covered car seats behind me. Except for Addie’s sippy cup, they’re empty. I do a mental check,” she writes in an excerpt obtained by Us Weekly ahead of its May 5 release. “Ali and Aleeah are with their dad. Addie is spending the night with Jeremy [Calvert]’s mom while he’s away working. It’s just me in the car.”

The MTV alum, 27, continued to speed up while driving down Mink Shoals Hill and couldn’t help when the dark thoughts came in. “There’s a steep cliff off the side of the road just up ahead,” Messer adds. “It would be so easy to drive my car over the edge. Then it would all be over. No more worries. No more failure. No more pain.”

After having a surge of emotions, the former 16 and Pregnant star began to think about everything she would be leaving behind and decided to slow down and pull over. “I turn off the engine and put my head down on the steering wheel,” she continues, admitting she cried from “the deepest part of [her] soul” thinking about her kids.

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Messer is the proud mom of three. She has 10-year-old twins Ali and Aleeah with ex-husband Corey Simms and 7-year-old daughter Adalynn (a.k.a. Addie) with ex-husband Jeremy.

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The star confesses she felt an immediate sense of relief afterwards. “It’s like I was in the middle of a violent thunderstorm, then suddenly the clouds parted and now everything is bathed in a warm light. I can see clearly what I have to do. My daughters need me,” she shares. Messer notes it would be “selfish to abandon them” and leave them with the “same void” she felt for so long.

“For better or worse, I’m all they have,” she explains. “I need to be stronger. I need to get the hell out of here and fix myself, so I can be the mother that my daughters deserve.”

If you or someone you know is contemplating suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.