by Florence Welch has faced numerous hardships throughout her career in an industry that is often unfair and sexist. Still, she’s now opened up about one of the hardest things she’s ever had to face: a near-death experience as a result of an ectopic pregnancy.
Speaking to The Guardian, the star revealed that she had experienced a miscarriage in August 2023. The fertilised egg had implanted in her fallopian tube, which led to huge internal bleeding. “The closest I came to making life was the closest I came to death,” she shared. “And I felt like I had stepped through this door, and it was just full of women, screaming.”
She added that this occurred on stage. After getting pregnant with her boyfriend, she learned of the tragedy from the doctors: “I think, because it was my first time being pregnant, and it was my first miscarriage, I was like, OK, I’ve heard this is part of it. I spoke to my doctor, and they are not generally dangerous. Devastating, but not dangerous.”
She was set to play a show in Cornwall a short while after, which she still went ahead with, despite waking up on the morning shaky and heavily bleeding. She made it through the performance, believing the issue had subsided. However, at the doctor’s insistence, she went to the hospital.
She shared incredulously: “Do you know the fucked-up thing?” she says. “I didn’t want to go for the scan. I thought, I’ve done this show, I’m fine, I can cope. But my doctor’s insistence that I come in saved my life.”
The doctor immediately told the star she needed surgery, and her fallopian tube could not be saved. She recalled a primal urge to flee, but the emergency surgery was successful, and she took to the stage again less than two weeks later.
Welch has been enjoying a triumphant return to the industry. Far Out gave her latest single, ‘One of the Greats’, five stars, calling it “surely a knock-out.” The review went on: “By the time she’s calling out to the girls, dedicating all of this to them and confronting dead on men’s fragility when it comes to powerful women, there is no coming back. It’s done, it’s dead, Florence Welch killed it, finally finding the exact right words to deal the ultimate blow.”
