Katy Perry fought off recent thoughts of suicide by finding gratitude in God
Katy Perry joined SiriusXM’s CBC Radio One this week to reflect on her career and her new single, “Daisies,” and said she fought off thoughts of suicide before her engagement and pregnancy by remaining grateful.
The pop star admitted her most recent battle with suicidal thoughts happened after the release of her last album, Witness.
“My career was on this trajectory when it was going up, and then I had the smallest shift, not that huge from an outside perspective. But for me it was seismic,” Perry told SiriusXM’s CBC Radio One.
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The “Firework” songstress admitted that she contemplated suicide following the 2017 release and breaking up with her now fiancé Orlando Bloom.
“I had broken up with my boyfriend, who is now my baby-daddy-to-be, and then I was excited about flying high off the next record,” Perry continued. “But the validation did not make me high, and so I just crashed.”
She recalled being so broken that she was able to finally come together.
Perry testified that what “saved” her “life” was finding “gratitude.”
“Gratitude is probably the thing that saved my life because if I did not find that, I would have wallowed in my own sadness and probably just jumped,” the 35-year-old explained. “But I found the ways to be grateful.”
“Every morning I wake up and it’s the very first thing I say, ‘Thank you God for today, I am grateful in every way. If it gets really hard I walk around and say, ‘I am grateful! … That’s been the light at the end of my tunnel.”
When describing why she believes in a higher power, the pregnant singer said fingerprints are a type of “sacred geometry” in mankind because no one is the same.
Perry admitted that “God is much bigger” than her and “he’s not a white guy on the throne.”
The artist was raised by Christian parents and started her singing career as a Christian artist. But after not making it in that industry, she went into pop music. She has also renounced her faith though she said she still believes in a higher power. Her parents, Mary and Keith Hudson, are traveling Pentecostal ministers who have actively prayed for their daughter ever since.
Perry said the pandemic is making everyone face their “worst demons” in this season but she’s managed to stay in good spirits.
When reflecting on her music, she said that music speaks the “language of her soul” so she writes songs of hope because she “needs” them.
“Hope” is something she has always held on to throughout her life because of her “relationship with God.”
“My hope is that something bigger than me created me for a purpose and reason, that I’m not disposable,” Perry said.
Perry is expecting her first child this year.
In 2017, the singer launched a marathon weekend of livestream events to promote the release her album at the time. During a live therapy session that week, she also tearfully talked about her upbringing, feeling "ashamed" of having had suicidal thoughts in the past but admitted that it was only God's grace that helped her through.
The session shed light on a low point in her life after she split with her ex-husband, Russell Brand, and battled thoughts of suicide. She admitted channeling her feelings into her 2013 song, "By the Grace of God," which talks about God intervening.
She elaborated in an interview with Glamour this year:
"I have had a lot of those thoughts, and I've written a lot of songs because of those thoughts. I would say that all of my best songs, or what I think are some of my better songs— 'By the Grace of God,' 'Roar,' 'Firework' — are basically motivational pep talks to myself. They're my soul speaking to me, saying, 'Come on. We can do this. One foot in front of the other.'"
