Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
My anxiety attack almost scuppered our honeymoon...
The Saturdays’ Frankie Bridge opens up on her mental health battles
POP star Frankie Bridge has revealed she suffered an anxiety attack after boarding her honeymoon jet – and made husband Wayne make a will there and then.
In tears, the ex-Saturdays singer begged soccer star Wayne to ring a lawyer to draft paperwork as the plane was on the tarmac.
And Frankie said being away from her son Parker – then nine months old – left her terrified he would grow up an orphan.
Frankie, a passionate mental health campaigner, courageously shares the 2014 story in a new self-help book.
She said: “I burst into tears. The stress of leaving Parker behind had been building up. I had tried to overcome the sense of terror and fear that engulfed me throughout the days leading up to this moment and suddenly, when I realised I couldn’t turn back, I was here, on a plane with no exit, it hit me.
“At a time that we were supposed to be at our happiest, I realised that if we both died Parker would be alone and without parents for the rest of his life.
“Not only that, but we had made no plans in case this happened, we had left no will or provisional plan for how he would be cared for. No one would know what our wishes were for him. I made Wayne call his lawyer.
“This type of crisis moment is something I had dealt with throughout my life, but I had never been responsible for someone else and this compounded my paranoia and exacerbated my fears to the point of, well, making my husband call a lawyer on his way to his honeymoon. But no one discusses the normality of this.”
PERFECT
The singer, who had her second child, Carter, with 41-year-old former Chelsea and England star Wayne in 2015, has battled depression and anxiety throughout her life. She has bravely spoken out about it in recent years.
As well as hosting her own podcast Open Mind, she has now published Grow : Motherhood, Mental Health And Me.
Frankie, 32, reveals in the book that she worries her struggles could be passed on to her boys – but says she has had reassuring conversations with them.
She added: “My biggest fear is that my kids will have my brain and my problems.
“It’s taken me a long time to accept my mental health and that will always be a work in progress, but I’m OK with that.
“I really hope by having these conversations with my boys from such a young age, their road to acceptance will be a lot quicker than mine. I want them to know no matter how sad or worried they are, nothing will make me stop loving them. That they are perfect because of these imperfections. That it takes the bravest person to say they are scared, the strongest person to say they feel weak.
“I want them to know that boys can and should cry, that they should talk about their feelings and worries, that there is nothing to be embarrassed about when airing your worries and that it actually only makes you a better person for doing it.”
Frankie, who starred in The Saturdays for eight years before going solo, added: “The stereotypes I grew up with should not exist in my children’s lives.”