Florence + the Machine’s Florence Welch is getting real about a pretty scary medical situation she faced several years ago.
In a new interview with the Guardian, the musician revealed that she almost died from an ectopic pregnancy back in 2023.
“I had a Coke can’s worth of blood in my abdomen,” she said. “The closest I came to making life was the closest I came to death.”
Florence said that she first became pregnant immediately after she and her partner were trying to conceive. “It was my first experience of even trying to get pregnant, and I thought, ‘There’s no way, because I’m ancient,'” she said. “It was a big shock. But it felt magical as well. I felt I had followed a bodily instinct, in that animal sense, and it had happened.”
However, Florence ended up experiencing a miscarriage early into the pregnancy. “I think because it was my first time being pregnant, and it was my first miscarriage, I was like, ‘Okay, I’ve heard this is part of it,'” she said. “I spoke to my doctor, and they are not generally dangerous. Devastating, but not dangerous.”
Florence said she first felt like something was seriously wrong after experiencing pain and bleeding before performing at the Boardmasters Festival in Cornwall in 2023. “I took some ibuprofen and stepped out on stage,” she said. “I was in the elements, in the wind and rain, and I just felt something working through me. I felt this thing take over, the thing that’s always there, the safe space of performance. My sister says it might be because everyone’s looking at me. Like, ‘Your most peaceful place is where you’re the f—ing center of attention?'”
Because she was able to perform, Florence initially “didn’t want to” go for a scan to see if there was something wrong with her. “I thought, ‘I’ve done this show, I’m fine, I can cope,'” she recalled. “But my doctor’s insistence that I come in saved my life.”
“I feel slightly more obsessive and fragile and wounded than I did before,” she said of how she felt after surviving the experience, which also resulted in several canceled tour dates. “But it has given me a sense of toughness in my work…working again helped me. It was like little lanterns in a fog. I could just pick my way through. And I was so angry! There was a fury at how unsupported I felt by my industry, how clear it was, that it wasn’t built for me.”
You can read the entire interview here.
