Shakira plunged into depression after losing her singing voice in 2017: 'It was my identity'
Shakira, who suffered a hemorrhage of her right vocal cord in 2017, said that the experience of not being able to sing temporarily plunged her into a deep depression. Speaking in an interview with the Guardian, the Colombian singer, 42, said she had never expected to lose her voice.
“I always thought there were going to be things in my life that would go away, like beauty, youth, all of that stuff,” she said. “But I never thought that my voice would leave me because it’s so inherent to my nature. It was my identity. So when I couldn’t sing, that was unbearable. There were times I couldn’t even get out of bed – I was so depressed.”
Things got so bad that she had to resort to using sign language to communicate with her family members. She could not take the help of writing out her messages as her children with Barcelona soccer star Gerard Piqué - Milan, 6, and Sasha, 4 - could not read. The "Hips don't Lie" songstress also said that there was never a time she fought with her husband more than when she could not speak.
“He jokes that you would think you would want your wife to shut up – but when I had to remain quiet, he felt like one of those ex-convicts who are given their freedom and don’t know what to do with it. I was not positive. I was so pessimistic. I was a bitter person to be around. Gerard saw the worst of me," she said.
After being forced to postpone her El Dorado World Tour because of the injury - an ordeal which was turned into a movie, releasing November 13 - doctors told her that she needed surgery. Shakira said that she resisted the idea of going under the knife and instead, tried hypnosis and meditation. She even ended up going to Lourdes to get holy water.
“Either I needed surgery or divine intervention," she said, luckily, her voice eventually returned, without an operation, which she said "felt like I was having some kind of religious experience”.
After rediscovering her voice, Shakira is all set to perform with Jennifer Lopez at the Super Bowl halftime show, which was a coveted career goal of most musicians before many of them started rejecting NFL's offer following the league's treatment of San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who infamously knelt during the national anthem in 2016 to protest racial inequality and police brutality rampant in the country. However, Shakira looked at her upcoming performance in a different light.
“Well, you know, I think it’s the right thing to do for the Latino community because we’ve also been through so much in Trump’s America, with walls being built and... It’s an opportunity to celebrate our culture, you know?” she said.
