RIta Ora broke down in tears as she described her mother’s breast battle after being moved by a contestant’s performance on Australia.
The singer, 31, who is a judge on the show, was moved to tears remembering her mum’s illness after contestant Aleisha Gam revealed her mum had been battling cancer for the last two years.
with it when she was younger, but thankfully went on to beat the disease.
She tearfully explained: ‘I know how it feels to sort of have that connection with a song, and then that memory always sticks with that song.
‘My mum, she also had cancer. When she would go and get her treatment, and she was losing her hair and stuff, we were kind of teenagers. It was really weird to see your mum, like, not be the superhero that you always think your mum is going to be.
‘Because you never think your parents are going to sort of, like, break down in front of you, you know what I mean? And then you have to sort of put them together. I can’t even speak.’
Rita added that Vera speaks about her battle with cancer, adding: ‘She’s a survivor, but she had it super young, and I think it’s so important to have that memory with them. I just wanted to put that out there. I don’t really talk about my mum like that. It’s really hard.’
Vera had been diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005 and had a mastectomy as well as treatment to get rid of the disease.
Rita explained that it was important to get checked out for any unusual symptoms, not just a lump: ‘I see these things saying check yourself for lumps but my mother didn’t have a lump she had a sharp pain, and she still went and got checked.
‘I have done the BRCA test and the gene test myself and, luckily, I don’t have the gene. But I still check myself regularly. Genetically, there was no history of breast cancer in my family before my mother, but she still got it.’
