Highlights
- Demi Lovato’s challenging relationship with her father, Patrick Lovato, deeply impacted her mental health.
- Lovato experienced guilt over not being able to help her father.
- Through her music, Lovato openly expressed her complicated feelings towards her father.
Demi Lovato has always been honest about her mental health struggles and personal challenges. While her successful music career has brought her fame, fortune, and a legion of adoring fans, it has also exposed her to the harsh glare of the public eye.
Lovato’s estranged relationship with her abusive and alcoholic father, Patrick Lovato, cast a long shadow over her life, and his unexpected death exacerbated her mental health and addiction issues, nearly costing her life.
Demi Lovato Carried A Lot Of Guilt About The Distant Relationship With Her Father
Demi Lovato was estranged from her biological father, Patrick Lovato, for an extended period following her parents’ divorce in 1994. The singer openly shared her experience during her appearance on Good Morning America in 2013, acknowledging their shared struggles with mental illness.
“I’ve dealt with mental illness. My father dealt with mental illness. He wasn’t able to function very well in society.” Lovato herself has faced the challenges of bipolar disorder, and she has been candid about her battles with self-harm and eating disorders.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Lovato reflected on her complex relationship with her birth father, recognizing its impact on her subsequent relationships and behaviors.
“It caused relationship issues and certain behaviors in the future. I learned the reasoning behind those behaviors was because of my dad,” she shared.
In the premiere of her 2021 documentary, Dancing With the Devil, Lovato bravely opened up about how her strained connection with her father influenced her upbringing. “… I longed for that relationship with him. Then I resented him because he was an addict and an alcoholic, and he was abusive to my mom. So I cut him out because I felt like it was causing more harm than good having him in my life.”
Lovato has attributed much of her trauma to her fractured relationship with her father and the trauma of witnessing abuse inflicted on her mother. Her mother, Dianna De La Garza, who remarried in 1995 to Eddie De La Garza, also shared disturbing accounts of domestic abuse perpetrated by her first husband in her 2018 memoir.
However, the Disney alum expressed guilt over the years, as she realized that despite advocating for mental health, she had been unable to assist her father as she had others.
“I also felt a lot of guilt over the years because I’d been such an advocate for mental health, yet here was my father who had bipolar and schizophrenia and, on top of that, the disease of addiction, and I hadn’t helped him the way that I would have helped other people or the way that I had been preaching about, and that really ate up at me.”
In a personal essay penned for Vogue in 2020, Lovato touched on her late father’s death anniversary as a challenging time for her. She wrote a gratitude letter to him and expressed appreciation for the aspects of him she had inherited.
This experience allowed Lovato to release long-held resentments and let go of the lingering impact of her father’s tumultuous presence in her life. “… I realized, for the first time, that I wasn’t going to have daddy issues for the rest of my life,” the singer shared.
Demi Lovato Wrote Several Songs Inspired By Her Estranged Relationship With Her Biological Father
Demi Lovato has used her music as a powerful channel to express her feelings about her father, Patrick Lovato, with whom she had a distant and challenging relationship. In her 2011 track “For the Love of a Daughter,” a raw and anguished ballad, she delved into the complex dynamics with her biological father, shedding light on his struggles with alcoholism and the profound impact it had on her life.
The singer also wrote “Father,” which she included on her 2015 album “Confident,” where she paid tribute to her late father. In an interview with Billboard magazine, she shared that this song allowed her to be brutally honest about her father’s passing.
Lovato also discussed her motivation for creating “Father” in a video on her YouTube channel. She revealed the conflict she felt at her father’s passing, given his abusive behavior. “… He was mean, but he wanted to be a good person. And he wanted to have his family, and when my mom married my stepdad, he still had this huge heart where he said, ‘I’m so glad that he’s taking care of you and doing the job that I wish I could do,’” she explained.
“Daddy Issues” also stands out as a deeply honest track from Lovato’s album “Tell Me You Love Me,” which marked her return to music following a hiatus in 2016. She explained that her time off allowed her to gather inspiration and experiences that influenced her music.
In “Daddy Issues”, Lovato sings, “You’re the man of my dreams because you know how to leave.” In an interview with the BBC, she revealed that this lyric drew from her own experiences, particularly her relationship with her absent father.
Demi Lovato Created The Lovato Treatment Scholarship Program To Honor Her Biological Father’s Memory
Demi Lovato’s biological father passed away in June 2013, after losing his battle with cancer. Although she has acknowledged that their relationship was far from ideal, she remains committed to honoring his memory. An example of this tribute is one of her wrist tattoos, featuring the Roman numeral three, which is reportedly dedicated to him.
“He wasn’t capable of raising a family, and it was because of his mental illness. To know that it wasn’t fully his fault really was saddening to me,” she said.
In the wake of Patrick Lovato’s passing in 2013, the singer commemorated his memory by establishing the Lovato Treatment Scholarship Program.
This initiative was designed to assist individuals facing challenges similar to what her father encountered. Lovato explained on Good Morning America that, through this program, she aims to help people with mental illness access the treatment they need, one person at a time.
Her partnership with CAST Recovery, a treatment center she had previously collaborated with, enables her to make a meaningful impact in this regard. Despite the complexities of her relationship with her late father, Lovato emphasized that he was, in essence, a wonderful person.
Source: NewsFinale
