Ed Sheeran has revealed that his wife Cherry, was diagnosed with a tumour whilst pregnant with their second child.
The couple welcomed their daughter Juniper in May 2022, and are also parents to Lyra Antarctica, who was born in August 2020.
Throughout their second pregnancy, the couple had kept everything pretty private, but he has now revealed that it was a very difficult time. Sheeran, 32, said that they were plagued with ‘fear, depression and anxiety’ because Cherry was diagnosed with a tumour that she couldn’t have treated until after she’d given birth.
This was all disclosed in an Insgram post on Wednesday, where the singer took to the social media to share his struggles with mental health over the last year, as he’d had to come to terms with his wife’s health issues, as well as grieving the loss of his best friend Jamal Edwards.
Jamal, was a music producer and the son of Loose Women star Brenda Edwards, who tragically died after a cardiac arrest brought on by taking cocaine and drinking alcohol in February of last year.
In the powerful post, Sheeran explained how he’s been working on his upcoming album Subtract for a decade, and that he’s had to deal with a lot of personal struggles whilst doing so. He went on to explain the details of his creative process, and how everything that life has thrown at him, he’s poured into his music.
“I had been working on Subtract for a decade, trying to sculpt the perfect acoustic album, writing and recording hundreds of songs with a clear vision of what I thought it should be. Then at the start of 2022, a series of events changed my life, my mental health, and ultimately the way I viewed music and art,” he said.
“Writing songs is my therapy. It helps me make sense of my feelings. I wrote without thought of what the songs would be, I just wrote whatever tumbled out. And in just over a week, I replaced a decade’s worth of work with my deepest darkest thoughts.”
The post continues, ”Within the space of a month, my pregnant wife got told she had a tumour, with no route to treatment until after the birth. My best friend Jamal, a brother to me, died suddenly, and I found myself standing in court defending my integrity and career as a songwriter. I was spiralling through fear, depression and anxiety. I felt like I was drowning, head below the surface, looking up but not being able to break through for air.”
”As an artist I didn’t feel like I could credibly put a body of work into the world that didn’t accurately represent where I am and how I need to express myself at this point in my life. This album is purely that. It’s opening the trapdoor into my soul. For the first time, I’m not trying to craft an album people will like, I’m merely putting something out that’s honest and true to where I am in my adult life.”
The album is set for release on May 5.
Sheeran has given any further update on wife Cherry’s health, however in January, he made his return to social media after a two-month break to focus on his personal life.
“The reason I’m making this video is, just being totally honest, I’ve had some turbulent things going on in my personal life so I just didn’t really feel like being online and pretending to be something I’m not, when I wasn’t feeling like that,” he said at the time. “And I know that sounds weird.”
He added that “things are looking up” and he’s “back online.”
