Avril Lavigne Gets Real About Going Out When You've Been Stuck Inside Due to Illness

Dealing with a chronic illness often means you can’t go out and do fun things like you used to — a challenge Avril Lavigne understands after her own health battle.

Lavigne attended the Race to Erase MS annual gala in Beverly Hills on Friday, making her first red carpet appearance in two years. The singer told E! she was grateful to be at the event after years of struggling with Lyme disease.

I haven’t even been able to come to one of these events for a few years. I’ve been tucked away and hibernating and healing, and it’s very up and down. Everything is brighter when you go through an experience like that. I’ve always been a really grounded and grateful person, but it changes a lot. The simple things in life are what mean the most, really. I’m happy to be here, happy to be supporting.

She also said she’s been working on her next album for the past three years and will finish it in two weeks, and release it later this year. The songs will be inspired by her recent challenges.

“I’ve been writing songs that are really just powerful and true and honest and sincere and I think people will really be able to relate to it,” she said. “I’ve gone through a lot of personal stuff in the past two years and so I’ve really drawn from that.”

Lavigne revealed she had Lyme disease in 2015, explaining that she had been bedridden for five months. She said she went “from doctor to doctor” for eight months, many of whom told her that her “problems didn’t exist.” At the time she went public with her illness, she said she was feeling “80 percent better.”

“There were definitely times I couldn’t shower for a full week because I could barely stand. It felt like having all your life sucked out of you,” she told People. “I felt like I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t talk and I couldn’t move. I thought I was dying.”

Lavigne isn’t the only singer to speak publicly their Lyme diagnosis. Last year, Shania Twain shared she too took a break from music due to the disease. Twain said Lyme disease had affected her vocal cords so severely that she wasn’t able to sing and grieved the loss of her voice for years. She said she eventually went to “vocal school” and worked on getting her voice back.