halsey

her mother

What was your mother like growing up?

My mom is awesome. She's really young. My mom is 40 and she raised me listening to Nirvana and Courtney Love and Coldplay, Gin Blossoms, The Cranberries, and stuff. Like, my early, early memories are of being a little kid running around in floral skirts and Doc Martens, when I was like three. She was always so strong and so, like, in charge of herself. That was always what I saw: a woman who was strong and bold and different. She loves what I'm doing. Honestly, I think she's really proud of herself.

When people ask her for advice on parenting she's always like, 'You really just gotta fuck them up in order for them to find out who they are.' You know, I grew up with my mom coming home from work with her mouth swollen and me saying, 'Mom?' And her being like, 'I can't talk...because I got my tongue pierced on my break.' I'm like, 'Mom, you're a grown up. I'm nine. Someone's got to make dinner. What the fuck are you doing?' She's a strong woman—she's got an amazing career right now, and I don't want to discredit her on any of that—but she's also fucking crazy, and that's okay. She knows that, and all her friends know that, and my family knows that and, you know, it made me more open to being myself. If I had parents who were normal, and crazy things started happening to me, weird little signs started popping up, I'd probably be like, 'I'm a freak.' But since I watched my mom do it, it was just normal to me.