“My friends, my hobbies, the things I like doing without a baby, are things that make me who I am. And I didn’t really have access to that for a while.”
Adele opened up about her experience of postpartum depression after giving birth to her son, revealing in a new interview that she’d lost parts of herself she won’t ever get back.
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Speaking to bestselling author Candice Carty-Williams in a cover interview for The Face, the 33-year-old singer was asked about her 2017 Grammys speech where she revealed that she’d “lost a lot” of herself after giving birth.
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“In my pregnancy and through becoming a mother, I lost a lot of myself, and I’ve struggled,” she said as she accepted the award for Album of the Year. “I still do struggle being a mom — it’s really hard. But tonight, winning this kinda feels full circle and like a bit of me has come back to myself.”
When asked by Candice if and how she’d found herself since that moment, Adele explained that there were parts of herself she wouldn’t ever get back.
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“There are definitely a few elements of myself that I don’t think I’ll ever get back,” she said. “More than anything, it’s the freedom of being able to do whatever you want, whenever you want. Going somewhere and not having to prioritize someone else. Whereas my number one priority with everything I do since I had Angelo, which is in life, in work, is obviously my son.”
She later added: “I don’t think I was ever completely selfless before I had Angelo. I still have that thing where every decision I make, I think of him first. And rightly so. Some parents don’t do that. I do.”
Opening up about her experience with postpartum depression in particular, Adele revealed that it had been partly triggered by wondering what kind of parent she wanted to be, as well as a lack of stimulation.
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“Giving, giving, giving, to a baby or a toddler, when they can’t even fucking talk to you, your brain goes a bit mushy,” she said. “You’re not stimulated very much. In that, I also got really quite bad postpartum depression, or postnatal as we call it [in the UK].”
“I think it was just… Not the pressure, but what kind of parent do you wanna be?” she went on. “No one wants to be like their own parents, no matter how great parents they were or not. You learn how to be a parent on the go. Or you start reading books, and that’s not right either, because it’s someone else’s experience of it and they’re all completely different.”
Adele went on to reveal that she sometimes still mourns the person she was before becoming a mother, but explained that it’s become more of a yearning as she wonders what she might do if she had the freedom to.
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“Having no time to even brush my teeth, let alone write a record or hang out with my friends,” she said. “My friends, my hobbies, the things I like doing without a baby, are things that make me who I am. And I didn’t really have access to that for a while.”
“It still makes me mourn myself a bit every now and then,” she continued. “Maybe I’m not mourning anymore, maybe I’m more yearning. A little bit like: ooh, what would I do and where would I go?”
But Adele revealed that things had gotten much easier as Angelo grew up since she can take him everywhere with her and he can also communicate how he’s feeling to her.
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“When they get older — he is so funny! He’s brilliant. He’s a fucking comedian, like an actual comedian,” she said. “As they get older, you can take them everywhere with you and they can tell you if they’re not enjoying something, what they want, if they’re hungry or if they have a tummy ache, whatever. It’s way easier to navigate once you can really communicate with them.”
You can read Adele’s full interview with The Face here.
