“Maybe this has happened to go: slow your roll, girl, let’s have a little reassessment,” says the singer in a new interview, sharing what she wishes she could tell her younger self and how she defines success now.
As Jessie J continues to work through her breast cancer treatment journey, the artist is reflecting on the challenges she’s faced both with the diagnosis and without, reflecting on her younger years and sharing her shifting perspective on life and fame.
In a new interview with The Sunday Times, the “Price Tag” singer emotionally recalled the late discovery of a lump on her right breast just as she was preparing to release her latest single in April. The size of the lump (5cm) meant that a lumpectomy was not an option — she would have to have a full mastectomy.
While it was detected early enough to keep her from having to deal with the effects of chemotherapy and radiation treatment, it was still a brutally shocking moment that no woman can truly prepare for.
It had been just four weeks since that mastectomy that Jessie met with The Times, to talk about this unexpected pivot in her life — in fact, coming straight from a blood test earlier that morning.
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The celebrity who is known for being an open book, talked about that approach to life and how she was even advised to not share everything — but that’s just not who she is. In the case of her breast cancer diagnosis, as soon as she knew enough to be clear, she shared the news with her followers, getting some wild responses.
“People messaged me saying, ‘Don’t get big implants,'” Jessie shared. “Like, this isn’t cosmetic surgery, it’s a mastectomy.”
She opened up about the procedure and her results, sharing, ” I was able to keep my nipple but it’s all numb now. And when I bend down it looks like I’ve got a plastic carrier bag in my boob because you can see the wrinkles.”
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And while she’s tried to stay strong, the journey has led to some pretty serious emotional moments that even caught her by surprise. One of those came during this post-surgery recovery period in a moment shared with her mother, who has moved in to help.
“The other night, Mum was massaging my boob for me, because I can’t touch the scars. And I started sobbing, ‘I can’t believe this has happened,'” Jessie shared. “She was like, ‘I wish it was me,’ and then I’m crying, she’s crying–‘”
The interviewer noted that even as she recalled the story, Jessie started getting emotional, before “pulling herself together” and adding, “I’m so glad it’s not her.”
Another thing that gets Jessie emotional is talking about her son, Sky, whom she shares with Danish basketball coach Chanan Colman. At the time of the interview, the 2-year-old is in Denmark with Colman for two weeks to allow his mother time to heal and recover. But it’s a tough separation, with Jessie admitting, “I miss him so much. He’s the light of my life.”
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While her surgeons have said their confident they’ve gotten all the cancer, Jessie said she still has more procedures ahead, including one to improve the symmetry of her implant. “And I need to heal,” she added. As for a possible recurrence, Jessie said she’s got “a one in two chance.”
Thinking about her unexpected diagnosis, Jessie mused, “Maybe this has happened to go: slow your roll, girl, let’s have a little reassessment.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Jessie reflects on her career and ambitions. While she still has both, obviously, this health reality check has helped her come to a new appreciation of where she’s at with her career.
The “I Want Love” artist didn’t have that meteoric and consistent rise since first breaking out more than a decade ago, but she’s okay with that. “Look, I’m really lucky to have had all the success that I’ve had, and that keeps me going now,” she said.
“Other people sometimes project on to you what they think your success should look like,” she added. “But actually I can pay my bills, I’m happy, I have a good balance. I love what I do. I don’t need to be a huge, monstrous pop star.”
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That’s a far progression to where she was earlier in her career when Jessie admits she was a lot more insecure about her place in UK pop stardom and beyond. “There was this narrative, which perhaps I’d created in my head, that the UK didn’t like me,” she admitted.
Looking back at it, she talked about what she might want to say to that younger, more insecure self that was perhaps trying a bit too hard to be more. “I want to give her a hug and tell her to take a deep breath,” Jessie told The Times. “When I was young there was a lot of fear and insecurity and I had no calming mechanisms.”
Now, though, she appears to feel a calmness about all that she’s already accomplished in her career, taking some of the pressure off. Instead of chasing greater fame and bigger hits, there’s more to it than that.
“It’s obviously great to achieve stuff,” Jessie conceded. “But if I die tomorrow, it won’t matter where my songs have charted. What matters is how I’ve made people feel.”
Her next connection comes with her new single “Believe in Magic,” out August 29. Written while she was pregnant in 2022, “the lyrics resonate so much with me now,” Jessie said,” sharing a few of the lines: “If I die today/ wanna know that I made it/ such a waste being jaded/ see all the little things that fix a broken heart.”
