Taylor Swift Reveals Her Mom Has Been Diagnosed With A Brain Tumor
Her mom, Andrea, is also currently battling breast cancer
In a new interview with Variety, Taylor Swift is opening up about her mom’s health. She reveals that Andrea Swift was recently diagnosed with a brain tumor — all while she was already undergoing chemotherapy for her ongoing battle with breast cancer. The heartbreaking diagnosis is why Taylor is limiting her upcoming tour.
“While she was going through treatment, they found a brain tumor,” Taylor tells Variety. “And the symptoms of what a person goes through when they have a brain tumor is nothing like what we’ve ever been through with her cancer before. So it’s just been a really hard time for us as a family.”
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Taylor will only make four stops in the U.S. on her tour before participating in a few European music festivals later this summer. “I mean, we don’t know what is going to happen,” she explains. “We don’t know what treatment we’re going to choose. It just was the decision to make at the time, for right now, for what’s going on.”
Back in 2015, Taylor first shared the news about her mom’s breast cancer diagnosis on Tumblr. “For Christmas this year, I asked my mom that one of her gifts to me be her going to the doctor to get screened for any health issues, just to ease some worries of mine,” she wrote at the time. “She agreed, and went in to get checked. There were no red flags and she felt perfectly fine, but she did it just to get me and my brother off her case about it. The results came in, and I’m saddened to tell you that my mom has been diagnosed with cancer.”
She says her mom allowed her to go public with the news because she knows all too well how busy we parents are, and that we tend to put our own health issues at the bottom of the list. It was Andrea’s hope that this would be the nudge parents everywhere needed to get to a doctor for a full check-up or to address existing concerns that we keep putting off.
Andrea’s newest diagnosis comes as an especially hard blow to the 30-year-old singer — she and her mom are best friends. “Everyone loves their mom, everyone’s got an important mom,” Taylor says. “But for me, she’s really the guiding force. Almost every decision I make, I talk to her about it first. So obviously it was a really big deal to ever speak about her illness.”
In an essay she wrote last March, Taylor updated fans about her mom’s breast cancer relapse and how it’s shaped her perspective on life: “It’s taught me that there are real problems and then there’s everything else. My mom’s cancer is a real problem. I used to be so anxious about daily ups and downs. I give all of my worry, stress, and prayers to real problems now.”
