In a new interview with Cosmopolitan, singer Mary Lambert has opened up about some traumatic parts of her past, including sexual assault, mental illness and suicidal ideation.
I was molested by my father at a really young age. You don’t know what’s happening, especially when you’re raised in that environment and your brain is forming, there’s a sense of what normal is,”
I was untreated with bipolar disorder. I was really living in extremes where I would have the best day ever and then I would come home and I would want to die. When I was 16, I snuck into an Army barracks and I was gang-raped. You kind of go into survival mode and are like, ‘OK, how do I navigate this situation?’”
At just 17, Lambert revealed to her church that she was gay. Just one year later, she attempted to take her own life.
She told Cosmopolitan.
Everything hurt so much. The fact that I was abused by my dad. Was raped. Was gay. Was bipolar. Not to mention always being a big girl in the world. Just existing in those spaces, of like, I don’t feel at home in my body, I don’t feel at home in this world. What options do I have left?”
Lambert says now she’s glad she didn’t die. Instead, she’s following a “journey of body love and self-love,” and her passion for music helped her get there.
I’m so glad I didn’t die—I’m so glad that I’m alive, that I didn’t give in—but it wasn’t easy. I feel like there is this canned way we talk about trauma, this canned way we talk about suicide. Like, you just go to Spain and you’re on a boat and you eat tapas—there’s your healing. Real healing is s—ty. It’s dirty and ugly and not easy.”
And even though healing is not easy, Lambert said she hopes other people who might be in a situation like she was know it’s possible.
It all works out in the end. If it hasn’t worked out, then it’s not the end. That’s something I tell myself. I wish I could have told myself that.”
