Selena Gomez has revealed she can’t carry her own children, opening up to Vanity Fair that it was something she needed to “grieve”.
In the new cover interview, the Only Murders In The Building star spoke about her thoughts on motherhood and marriage, saying she had a firm plan in place to start a family by the age of 35. “Before I met my boyfriend [singer Benny Blanco], I was single for five years, with the exception of going on a few dates,” she told the magazine. “And I was like, ‘Okay, if this is the vibe, then what is the most important thing to me? Family.’ ”
She said she was open to adopting children, particularly as her own mother was adopted. She spoke about being a godmother to her cousin Priscilla‘s two children, then paused.
“I haven’t ever said this, but I unfortunately can’t carry my own children,” she said. “I have a lot of medical issues that would put my life and the baby’s life in jeopardy. That was something I had to grieve for a while.”
Gomez, 32, has been open about her diagnosis with lupus, an autoimmune disease where your body’s immune system attacks your own tissues and organs. It is not yet entirely understood, and there is no cure, but it can be managed (in 2017, Gomez revealed she had a kidney transplant, donated by friend Francia Raísa).
The singer has also been open about living with bipolar disorder, releasing a documentary My Mind & Me in 2022 about her health struggles. Ahead of the release, she told Rolling Stone the medication she takes for bipolar may mean she is unable to have a safe pregnancy.
“I’m going to be very open with everybody about this: I’ve been to four treatment centres,” Gomez said in the Rolling Stone interview.
“I think when I started hitting my early twenties is when it started to get really dark, when I started to feel like I was not in control of what I was feeling, whether that was really great or really bad.”
Becoming a mother is via adoption or surrogacy is “not necessarily the way [she] envisioned it”, she told Vanity Fair.
“I thought it would happen the way it happens for everyone. [But] I’m in a much better place with that. I find it a blessing that there are wonderful people willing to do surrogacy or adoption, which are both huge possibilities for me. It made me really thankful for the other outlets for people who are dying to be moms. I’m one of those people. I’m excited for what that journey will look like, but it’ll look a little different. At the end of the day, I don’t care. It’ll be mine. It’ll be my baby.”
You can read the full interview here.
Lead image: Selena Gomez / Instagram.
