Influencer Kiarra Hillman is standing up to critics who told her to divorce her husband after a recent viral video.
“I was told to divorce my husband this week,” Kiarra, 31, wrote over a Friday, January 9, Instagram video featuring several clips of her husband, Nate Hillman, their adoptive daughter, Monrowe Lilee, and their family dog.
“This week I was told, ‘Divorce him. Leave him now. He hates you.’ A video I posted went viral & it landed on the wrong side of the internet,” she continued in the caption. “What was meant to be a lighthearted, relatable parenting moment that we found humor in was completely misinterpreted. Assumptions were made that couldn’t have been further from the truth.”
Kiarra continued, “Based on a two-minute video meant to be funny, thousands of comments suddenly appeared about how awful of a man my husband supposedly is. That he hates me. Doesn’t respect me. Is a terrible father. & worse.”
Kiarra, who has 276,000 followers on Instagram and has dedicated her page to documenting the couple’s infertility and adoption journey, went viral for a January 5 Instagram video in which she sat in the back of a car with Monrowe, 4 months. She told Nate, who was off-camera, that their daughter had finally fallen asleep after struggling to do so for four days.
“If we pull in that driveway, and her eyes are closed … no doors are opening, no barking, we will eat our food in here, I don’t care if we’re in here for two hours or three days,” she said. “Nobody’s moving. Nobody breathes. Everyone sits still.”
Nate could be heard telling Kiarra that he would take the baby if she woke up. He then could be heard unbuckling his seatbelt as Kiarra told him to “unbuckle quieter.” Kiarra encouraged her husband to eat in the car with her, but he refused, telling her that they didn’t have utensils in the car.
“Use your hands,” she told him. Nate then got out of the car and closed the driver’s side door before walking around to the backseat. “I live here now,” Kiarra said.
Nate then shut the back passenger’s side door, waking the baby up, who started crying. At one point, Kiarra herself appeared to be crying or mock-crying before she shot her husband a frustrated look.
Many of the comments slammed Nate and his behavior.
“Why couldn’t he just give you a break and eat in the damn car even if it was for a half an hour,” one person wrote. “You were boarder line [sic] begging him and I know the look of holding back those tears allll too well. I’m sorry mama, I know what you’re feeling. 🤍 it’s all temporary.”
“Woman, are you safe? Honestly, are you? He does not care about you or your child,” another person added. “Please ensure you have the means to leave if and when you need to. This is not OK. This looks like emotional abuse to me.”
In her response video, Kiarra wrote that she is typically used to “people hating on me.” However, seeing people attack Nate put her “in defense mode.”
“Every part of me wanted to get online and let everyone have it. But the man I’m married to, who is clearly more level-headed than me, reminded me that two wrongs don’t make a right. And he’s right,” she continued. “Still, I couldn’t just sit back without saying something. Not to argue. Not to convince people who have already made up their minds.”
Kiarra added that Nate has “stood by me in my darkest seasons” and “held me up through struggles I couldn’t see myself surviving.”
Addressing Nate directly, Kiarra wrote, “You are an incredible husband. You love your daughter beyond words. And we are so lucky to have you. Not because you need defending, anyone who truly knows you already knows the kind of man you are, but so you always know this: I’ve got you, too.”
