Turning tragedy into triumph! Christina Aguilera has never shied away from her troubling childhood, dealing with the alleged domestic abuse of her father, Fausto Xavier Aguilera. In fact, she’s written several songs about it. So it makes sense that the pop diva, 34, would lend her voice to HopeLine from Verizon, which supports domestic violence prevention and awareness.
At a Thursday, Nov. 12, event for the campaign in L.A., The Voice coach opened up to Us Weekly about her partnership with HopeLine from Verizon and an easy way people can help stop domestic violence – by purchasing an exclusive Verizon pre-paid bundle available at Walmart.
“It’s a subject that really hits home with me because I’ve always been pretty vocal and open about my own experiences in witnessing domestic violence in the home and neighboring homes around me, so it was something that was pretty constant in my younger upbringing,” she tells Us. “It is a hush, hush subject. Not everybody likes to wear it on their sleeve and talk about it. It makes people uncomfortable and there’s a lot of shame around it. But that’s why for me, it’s so important for me to speak my truth and helping others to find theirs and to find their own hope in a hopeless situation.”
In her 2002 song “I’m OK,” from her sophomore album, Stripped, Aguilera outlined the abuse she witnessed between her father and her mother, singing, “It hurt me to see the pain across my mother’s face / Every time my father’s fist would put her in her place / Hearing all the yelling, I would cry in my room, hoping it would be over soon / Bruises fade, father, but the pain remains the same / And I still remember how you kept me so afraid.”
She later apologized to her dad in the 2006 song, “Hurt,” singing, “I’m sorry for blaming you, for everything I just couldn’t do / and I’ve hurt myself by hurting you.”
As a mother of two — she shares son, Max, 7, with ex-husband, Jordan Bratman, and daughter, Summer, 14 months, with fiancé Matt Rutler — Aguilera recognizes the importance of teaching her children about domestic violence.
“I definitely knew when I was going into making the decision to have children of my own, that I definitely would do my very best to make sure their environment was safe, that they were emotionally safe and secure, because those were the things that I didn’t have growing up,” she tells Us. “In turn, [that’s] why I found music to definitely be my form of release and my outlet and therapeutic at times for me. Hopefully I’ll instill a love of music in them in a joyful sense rather than having them need it as an escape. But I honestly believe that it’s good to be truthful with your children, I think there’s an appropriate time and place and way to talk about it.”
