Demi Lovato is opening up about the pandemic, mental health, her late father, Black Lives Matter and more in a new letter published for Vogue.
Lovato started the letter off by talking about how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected her anxiety and mental health. She wrote, "Depression and mental illness are part of my history, and because of all the uncertainty surrounding the pandemic, my anxiety skyrocketed. I was suddenly confronted with all these questions: 'When are we going to go back to work?' 'Are more people going to have to die?' 'How bad is this going to get?' Everything was so suddenly out of my control and not just for me individually, but for us as a global community."
Demi continued on to reveal what she has done to help keep a positive mindset and that her fiancé Max Ehrich helped her get on that path. She explained, "I just started picking up on the things he does. I started meditating and doing yoga. I started journaling, painting, taking pictures and being creative, and learning to appreciate nature, after realizing I’d been taking it for granted all this time."
On the topic of racial injustice and Black Lives Matter, the singer talked about growing up listening to and being influenced by Black female artists like Aretha Franklin and Whitney Houston, and that being so inspired by them encouraged her to do what she could to use her platform to help spread awareness. She shared, "After taking some time to educate myself, what I’ve learned is that to be a good ally, you need to be willing to protect people at all costs. You have to step in if you see something happening that’s not right: a racist act, a racist comment, a racist joke. And it’s not just with Black Lives Matter. It’s also with the Me Too movement. Finally, the world is waking up and it’s beautiful to witness."
Later on in her letter, Lovato also spoke about her late father and opened up about how this year has been a time of growth, letting go of resentment she has held towards him. She explained, "There was the anniversary of my father’s death, which is a couple of days after Father’s Day — a really hard time of year for me. But this year, something happened. I wrote a gratitude letter to him, thanking him for all the things that I got from him. It was this beautiful release of all the resentments I had towards him. I realized, for the first time, that I wasn’t going to have daddy issues for the rest of my life. In short, 2020 has been a year of growth."
Read Demi's full heartfelt letter on Vogue.com.
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