Ahead of the launch of her debut novel Mirror, Mirror, Cara Delevingne has revealed how she now copes with the pressures of a heavy workload. “I have to cry every day,” she told The Telegraph. “If I don’t, I get angry. So when I go and see my [yoga] teacher, it’s like I download all the pain that I’ve been holding on to. I cry and I shake. It’s like a f—ing exorcism.”
In the exclusive interview with the paper, Cara talks openly about her struggles with depression, the crippling illness that drove her to contemplate suicide not once but twice, the paper reveals – as a teenager, and when she was at the height of her modeling career, just 22, having won Model of the Year at the British Fashion Awards for the second time in three years.
She also told of how she helped comfort a female fan, who once found herself close to the brink. “I still talk to this one girl on Instagram who was so close to committing suicide because both of her parents died of cancer a year apart,” she said. “I said [to her], ‘Please listen to me when I say: don’t do it. Just walk away. I know exactly how you’re feeling. You’re standing at the f—ing edge, about to throw everything away. But what you don’t understand is that if you don’t throw it away, you can help others.’ When I connect with people like that, I can honestly say: I’ve been there.”
Cara credits writing for helping her through her depression. She said,”You don’t know how else to light a candle in that dark place. But when you do, you let it pour out.”
And it was through this simple practice that she came up with the idea to one day write her own book.
Mirror Mirror, written in collaboration with novelist Rowan Coleman (author of We Are All Made Of Stars and more recently, The Summer of Impossible Things), is a coming-of-age tale about teenagers in a band, growing up in the digital age, all of whom have to confront their inner fears and truths to help solve the mystery of what happened to a missing friend.
Set for release this October, it is certain to be a huge hit amongst Cara’s 40 million-plus Instagram followers. And as for us? We can’t wait to read it either.
This post was written by a Grazia contributor. It originally appeared on our sister site, Grazia.
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