Demi Lovato has opened up about the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on her mental health.
The lockdown came while Lovato was still riding high from the praise for her performance of the U.S. national anthem at the Super Bowl and for her emotional performance at the Grammy Awards.
“I felt secure in my career and had been prepared mentally to crush it,” the singer wrote in a letter for Vogue. “When everything came to a halt, I — like I’m sure many others reading this — felt adrift.
“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.”
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Lovato said the pandemic made her reevaluate her priorities. “I knew that I wanted to learn something from this time that could actually better my life, my mental health and my emotional wellbeing in the long term,” she admitted.
Lovato – who said her asthma and other health issues make COVID-19 a bigger threat – listed the activities and hobbies she started doing to benefit her mental health and how she made peace with her relationship with her late father.
The 28-year-old pop star also explained how she refocused her social media influence to replace “glamour shots and pictures of me looking cute and fancy” with posts “that I thought would educate people.”
If there is one positive about the pandemic, said Lovato, it is the change it is creating. “The world is waking up and it’s beautiful to witness,” she wrote.
“Nobody’s had a perfect 2020. Far from it. What we all need to realize, though, is that it’s OK for things not to be OK sometimes.”
Read Lovato's full letter here.