Mariah Carey Shares About Her ‘Messed Up’ Upbringing and Her Love of Christmas

Singer Mariah Carey is talking about her upbringing in a recent interview.

In an interview with W Magazine released Friday, Carey spoke about being known as “so festive” and “such a 🎄Christmas girl” and also shared about growing up “with a messed-up life.”

She shared:

“But, really, 🎄Christmas makes me happy. People think I had this princess-style life or whatever, a kind of fairy-tale existence where I just emerged, like, ‘Here I am!’ And that is not what it is. I doubt you have enough time to write about all that, so we won’t go into it. But when you grow up with a messed-up life and then you’re able to have this transformation where you can make your life what you want it to be? That is joy for me.”

Carey also said that her childhood has impacted how she raises her 11-year-old twins with Nick Cannon, Moroccan and Monroe.

“That’s why I want my kids to have everything they can have. I want them to be able to understand that they can be anything they want to be,” she added.

In an interview with CBS News in 2020, the 52-year-old spoke candidly about her “dysfunctional family.”

“There was a lot of unrest in my household and I had difficulty with having come from such a dysfunctional family. I needed to heal myself and heal that inner child that I tried to keep alive through all of the dysfunction and mess,” she said.

Carey also revealed that she wants to be a different kind of mother than her own mother was to her, whom she said she has a “complicated” relationship with.

“For me, it’s very important that the kids always feel safe and feel seen and heard and that they know that they are loved unconditionally and that no matter what, I’ll be there for them. That’s very important to me because growing up and being alone in the house or in these dangerous situations was traumatizing,” she shared.