Madonna is taking a moment to celebrate her kids.
The pop icon, 65, is currently on tour with four of her six children: son David, 18, and daughter Mercy, also 18, and twin daughters Stella and Estere, 11. She took to Instagram on Thursday, April 25, to give them a shout-out for their hard work throughout the process.
“On the day before our 80th show of the Celebration Tour, I need to acknowledge my incredibly talented children who carried me through this Journey each of them bringing their own unique talent to the stage,” she wrote alongside several photos from the tour, including a snap of her playing guitar with David and another of her embracing David, Stella and Estere in a group hug.
She continued: “Rehearsals began over a year ago with almost a 2 month break waiting for me [to] recover from a near death experience. They never stopped practicing … they never stopped cheering me on and supporting me. There [sic] enthusiasm kept me Going!!! They were also going to school and rehearsing every night. I am so very proud of all of them.”
Madonna developed a serious bacterial infection in June 2023 and was put into a medically induced coma. In the wake of the health scare, the singer pushed The Celebration Tour’s previously announced October 2023 start date to December. She addressed the “near-death experience” at one of her performances at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, California, last month.
“It was pretty scary. Obviously, I didn’t know for four days, because I was in an induced coma. But when I woke up, the first word I said was, ‘No.’ Anyway, that’s what my assistant tells me,” she told the crowd, per Variety.
Not one to let a health crisis slow her down — she also told the audience that she has “fallen off a lot of horses and broken a lot of bones” — Madonna hit the road with her kids in December 2023.
“I think what my children learned the most this year of rehearsing and performing is that if you [want] to follow your dreams, you have to work hard for them,” she continued in Thursday’s Instagram caption. “ And if all of them choose something different later in life, they will never forget this year of blood, sweat, and tears. Nor will I. It’s a CELEBRATION!”
Madonna also shares daughter Lourdes, 27, with ex Carlos Leon and son Rocco, 23, with her ex-husband Guy Ritchie. Her other four children are adopted.
The Grammy winner has praised her children for having her back when she got sick last summer.
“As a mother you can really get caught up In the needs of your children and the seemingly endless giving. But when the chips were down my children really showed up for me,” she wrote via Instagram in July 2023 alongside photos of herself with David and Lourdes. “I saw a side to them I had never seen before. It made all the difference.”
