Madonna opens up about suicidal ideation during custody battle for son: ‘I just couldn’t take it’

Madonna has spoken about the emotional turmoil she faced during her custody battle for her son Rocco, revealing that she “actually contemplated suicide”.

Speaking in her first ever long-form podcast interview with author Jay Shetty, the 67-year-old Queen of Pop dubbed the custody fight with her ex-husband Guy Ritchie as “one of the most painful moments” in her life.

The “Vogue” hitmaker married the filmmaker and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels director in 2000, the same year that Rocco, her second child, was born. 

Madonna and Ritchie divorced in 2008, and in December 2015, while Madonna was performing on her Rebel Heart Tour, she was swept into a transatlantic legal squabble for custody of Rocco.

The 15-year-old decided to stop travelling with Madonna while she was on tour, and opted to move to London with his father. For the following nine months, Madonna and Ritchie engaged in a public battle to have Rocco in their respective cities, New York and London, before reaching a custody deal in September 2016, when Rocco was 16.

At the time, Ritchie’s lawyer Peter Bronstein confirmed Rocco would continue to live with his father in London.

Opening up about that time to Shetty, Madonna said she struggled to “see the forest through the trees” and would lay on her dressing room floor “sobbing”.

“There were moments in my life I wanted to cut my arms off… I actually contemplated suicide,” she revealed.

“I would say probably one of the most painful moments in my life where I honestly couldn’t see the forest for the trees was when I went through a custody battle [for] my son.

“I actually contemplated suicide. And that probably sounds really weird coming from me because I’m not… I’m not emo, you know what I mean? But I was like, ‘I can’t take this pain anymore.’”

Madonna went on to say that she felt that someone “might as well just kill [her]” if she couldn’t have custody of her child.

“Even though my marriage didn’t work out… I mean a lot of people’s marriages don’t work out. They marry the wrong people. They’re not aligned. They’re not meant for each other,” she explained.

“Someone trying to take my child away from me was like, they might as well just kill me. That’s really how I was thinking.”

To add to the trauma the musician was going through, she still had to perform every night for tens of thousands of people on tour. 

“I really thought it was like it was the end of the world. I couldn’t take it. I just couldn’t take it,” she said of that time.

Throughout her conversation with Shetty, Madonna admitted that she “wouldn’t be here” if it weren’t for her spirituality, the Jewish mystical practice Kabbalah, which she adopted in 1996.

“As soon as you understand that what’s happening to you is a challenge, that you are karmically meant to experience and learn from and evolve to a higher level of consciousness,” she said, “then you can look at that event, that experience as a lesson and not punishment.”

She also confirmed that she and Rocco, now 25, have a good relationship today, and that she is “really good friends” with her son.

Suicide is preventable. Readers who are affected by the issues raised in this story are encouraged to contact the Samaritans on 116 123 (www.samaritans.org), or Mind on 0300 123 3393 (www.mind.org.uk). ​Readers in the US are encouraged to contact the National Suicide Prevention Line on 1-800-273-8255.

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