After a four-year hiatus, Duffy has broken her silence on social media with a heartfelt message for fans.
On Monday, the pop singer-songwriter shared a short motivational video on Instagram in which she appeared to be urging followers to look beyond “external factors” in pursuit of happiness.
“One day you’re going to see it, that happiness was always about the discovery, the hope, the listening to your heart and following it wherever it chose to go,” a voice-over in the video declares.
“Happiness was always about being kinder to yourself. It was always about embracing the person you are becoming,” it continues. “One day you will understand that happiness was always about learning how to live with yourself.”
In an accompanying caption, Duffy described the clip as a “little something to motivate the heart.”
“Hope you are all doing well,” she wrote. “Lots of love, Duffy.”
As of Thursday, the post had received nearly 17,000 likes, as well as a plethora of well wishes from fans.
“We miss you Duffy and your beautiful voice,” one person wrote.
Added another: “Thank you, this made me cry. It’s difficult to learn to love & be kind to yourself. I’m still working on it.”
The post was Duffy’s first since 2020. In February of that year, she said that she’d decided to leave the spotlight about a decade earlier after having been “raped and drugged and held captive over some days.”
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“Of course I survived. The recovery took time,” she wrote in a since-deleted Instagram post. “There’s no light way to say it. But I can tell you in the last decade, the thousands and thousands of days I committed to wanting to feel the sunshine in my heart again, the sun does now shine.”
She continued: “You wonder why I did not choose to use my voice to express my pain? I did not want to show the world the sadness in my eyes. I asked myself, how can I sing from the heart if it is broken? And slowly it unbroke.”
She did not identify an assailant or offer a specific timeline in which the assault and kidnapping had taken place.
Later in 2020, she criticized Netflix for streaming the Polish film “365 Days,” which depicts acts of sexual violence.
“It grieves me that Netflix provides a platform for such ‘cinema’, that eroticizes kidnapping and distorts sexual violence and trafficking as a ‘sexy’ movie,” she wrote in an open letter to Reed Hastings, Netflix’s co-founder. “I just can’t imagine how Netflix could overlook how careless, insensitive, and dangerous this is.”
Duffy, whose full name is Aimée Anne Duffy, rose to fame in 2008 with the release of her acclaimed debut album, “Rockferry.”
At the time, her U.K. origins, throwback style and rich, soulful voice drew favorable comparisons to Adele and Amy Winehouse. In 2009, “Rockferry” won the Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Album.
Duffy unveiled her second album, “Endlessly,” in 2010. However, she appeared to retreat from the music industry shortly thereafter.
Need help? Visit RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Online Hotline or the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s website.