In an interview with Howard Stern, Lady Gaga reveals she was raped as a teen by an older music producer.

Gaga said that for many years, she wasn’t willing to admit it had even happened. And when she did, she didn’t want to share it. “I’ll be damned if somebody’s going to say that every creatively intelligent thing that I ever did has boiled down to one dickhead that did that to me,” she said. “I’m going to take responsibility for all of my pain, looking beautiful, and all the things that I’ve made out of my strife.”

– Rolling Stone Magazine article by |

This is an extreme way to deal with grief, sadness and pain, but nonetheless an effective way for an intense expressionist like Lady Gaga to move through grief- During a performance at SXSW, her artist friend Millie Brown vomited up paint all over Gaga and rode a mechanical bull to the song, “Swine”, a song she wrote about the person who raped her.

Why I respect this move: She had stuffed the grief down for several years, before finally facing it.

“All this drinking and all this nonsense, you have to go to the source,” she said. “Otherwise it just won’t go away.” The vocalist sought mental, emotional and physical therapy to cope with the rape.

(–and also, expressing her self through performance art)

I’m writing about this because I support anyone who wants to heal their grief in whatever positive and artistic way they need to do it. In Lady Gaga’s case, she took responsibility for her pain, took attention to the fact she was stuffing it by drinking (and other things), and decided to “go to the source” to heal herself.

Here’s a part of the Howard Stern interview with Lady Gaga:

Listen to the entire interview: