“Everyone loves their mom; everyone’s got an important mom,” Taylor told the publication. “But for me, she’s really the guiding force. Almost every decision I make, I talk to her about it first. So obviously it was a really big deal to ever speak about her illness.”
Taylor's mother was already undergoing treatment for cancer (which arrived for the second time) while receiving this horrifying new diagnosis.
“She was going through chemo, and that’s a hard enough thing for a person to go through,” Taylor revealed.
“While she was going through treatment, they found a brain tumor,” she continued. “And the symptoms of what a person goes through when they have a brain tumor is nothing like what we’ve ever been through with her cancer before. So it’s just been a really hard time for us as a family.”
Further in the interview, Taylor explains why her Lover tour schedule is a lot shorter than her regular stadium world tours, saying she wanted to spend more time with her mother during this hard time.
“I mean, we don’t know what is going to happen,” she shared. “We don’t know what treatment we’re going to choose. It just was the decision to make at the time, for right now, for what’s going on.”
Last year, Taylor wrote a personal essay in Elle about how she was dealing with her mother's second cancer diagnosis which came four years after the first.
“I’ve had to learn how to handle serious illness in my family. Both of my parents have had cancer, and my mom is now fighting her battle with it again,” she wrote.
“It’s taught me that there are real problems and then there’s everything else,” she continued. “My mom’s cancer is a real problem. I used to be so anxious about daily ups and downs. I give all of my worry, stress, and prayers to real problems now.”
Miss Americana premieres on Jan. 31 on Netflix.
