Tiffany Haddish Opens Up About Childhood Trauma: 'I Thought I Would Die Before I Was 21'

"So many of my friends were getting killed. It was so much devastation around me that I just ... I didn't think I would make it," the actress said

Tiffany Haddish is recalling a scary time in her life.

In an exclusive sneak peek from this week's episode of the SHE MD podcast, the actress, comedian and author of I Curse You with Joy said she "never" thought she'd be a famous entertainer, in large part because of certain traumatic experiences from her childhood.

"I didn't even think I would make it to 21," said Haddish, 44. "I thought I would die before I was 21, because people were getting shot around me."

"I had been to so many funerals. So many of my friends were getting killed. It was so much devastation around me that I just ... I didn't think I would make it," she added.

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Related: Tiffany Haddish Used to Ask Her Therapist to 'Come with Me on Dates' to Vet Suitors

But, as the Haunted Mansion actress explained on the podcast, that feeling didn't take away from her desire to make a positive difference in her chosen profession.

"Even as I got older and I felt like my world was being taken and pulled apart and ripped up and shredded and I was getting beat up physically, emotionally, mentally, all these things, I still was like, 'I just want to bring joy,' " Haddish said.

As a child, "Everything I saw on Star Search, I tried to do," she recalled. "I wanted to be on Star Search so bad. I remember having my little church shoes, those little Mary Janes with the hard bottoms. I'd go in the kitchen, I'd be tap dancing."

Haddish added that she would even "invite the kids on the block in the neighborhood to come over" and watch her perform.

"I would make up these songs and sing and dance for them," she said. "Did I imagine that I would be an entertainer? Yes. Did I imagine that it would be on this scale? No."

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In a recent conversation with PEOPLE surrounding her new book I Curse You with Joy, Haddish said she "wanted this book to be about something," explaining, “I felt like I needed to live a little more life and get a better understanding of where I am now.”

After her bestselling 2017 debut The Last Black Unicorn, Haddish’s new book picks up where the Girls Trip star last left readers. In I Curse You with Joy, she delves into the ups and downs of her career in the entertainment industry, as well as her personal life, including her mother’s struggles with mental illness, which led Haddish to become her family’s caretaker before she ended up in the foster care system.

The star also acknowledged to PEOPLE that the book is coming after a handful of controversies, including two DUI-related arrests, as well as difficult moments in her personal life, like the loss of her grandmother and the end of her relationship with rapper-actor Common.

Haddish appears on this week's episode of the SHE MD podcast with Dr. Thaïs Aliabadi and Mary Alice Haney, premiering in full on Tuesday, May 14.

I Curse You with Joy is available now wherever books are sold.

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