(NEW YORK) — Jessica Simpson has been sober for four years.
The singer and entrepreneur penned an emotional Instagram post on Monday, in which she shared a photo of herself from Nov. 1, 2017: the day she decided to stop drinking alcohol.
Explaining that she had become “an unrecognizable version of myself,” she stated that she “knew in this very moment I would allow myself to take back my light, show victory over my internal battle of self respect, and brave this world with piercing clarity.”
“Personally, to do this I needed to stop drinking alcohol because it kept my mind and heart circling in the same direction and quite honestly I was exhausted,” she wrote. “I wanted to feel the pain so I could carry it like a badge of honor. I wanted to live as a leader does and break cycles to advance forward- never looking back with regret and remorse over any choice I have made and would make for the rest of my time here within this beautiful world.”
Simpson, 41, revealed in her 2020 memoir, “Open Book,” that she was sexually abused as a child and added that as an adult, she used alcohol and pills to cope with the pain of that experience. Then, after a Halloween party at her home in 2017, she realized she needed to stop drinking.
“There is so much stigma around the word alcoholism or the label of an alcoholic. The real work that needed to be done in my life was to actually accept failure, pain, brokenness, and self sabotage,” she added in her post Monday. “The drinking wasn’t the issue. I was.”
“I didn’t love myself. I didn’t respect my own power. Today I do,” she continued. “I have made nice with the fears and I have accepted the parts of my life that are just sad. I own my personal power with soulful courage. I am wildly honest and comfortably open. I am free.”
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