Getting real. Hayley Williams revealed that she lost a lot of weight after her separation from her ex-husband, Chad Gilbert, in 2017.
“I was in a very unhealthy relationship, and I just kept thinking, ‘I can fix it this time,’” Williams, 31, told the Guardian in an interview published Thursday, March 12.
Williams and the New Found Glory guitarist, 39, called it quits after one year of marriage. After they split, it took the Paramore singer a while to realized that she had gotten so thin from the stress and unhappiness.
“It wasn’t until I saw the pictures that I was like, there’s no hiding that I’m not OK now,” she said after shooting the band’s first two music videos to go with their After Laughter album. “And part of me enjoyed that – if people know I’m not OK, they won’t get too close.”
At the time, the Mississippi native weighed only 91 pounds. Once her bandmates saw her frail appearance, they focused on getting her to eat, which worked, but that wasn’t all she did to cope with her failed marriage.
“It wasn’t really about me. It was about people-pleasing,” Williams said, explaining that her divorce and inability to face her emotions also led her to turn to alcohol, which wasn’t really a fan of in her 20s.
While on tour, she admitted that she was “looking to break free from a prison that I’d put myself in and to also forget at the same time.”
It wasn’t until she got back home that she began to realize that she was pushing down her fears and emotions linked to the broken relationship and that of her parents, who had split when she was a child.
“What happens in our brains often manifests physically if we don’t take care of it,” she explained, referencing her dramatic weight loss.
Through her new music and first solo record, Petals for Armor, the “26” singer learned that her past isn’t something she should regret, but instead something she can use to move forward.
“Women’s rage has changed many things in this world,” she explained to the outlet. “We’ve been able to effect progress in so many arenas. It doesn’t have to all be ignorance and hate speech and bulls–t.”
Petals for Armor is set for a May 8 release.
