FOR a person who has fiercely guarded her private life ever since finding fame just over a decade ago, songstress Lira is quite open in her new memoir, Lira: Making HerStory.
Without forgetting her revered craft and status as a singer-songwriter and fashionista (her name reportedly amasses over R50-million worth of media coverage annually in the country), the 34-year-old also tackles, at length, abandonment issues with her biological father, and even gives us a glimpse of what her wedding vows might have read like in a gushing dedication to her husband Robin Kohl.
She was only seven when her father, who had remarried, broke the news that he was emigrating to the US – without her. “This broke my heart as I did not understand, particularly because I was not going with them – yet his family was going to join him,” she writes. “For the first time I felt that I was not good enough, and this became an internal struggle for me for many years. I never understood why he left and I could not visit.”
The 10-times SA Music Awards (Samas) winner writes that this haunted her entire youth, and the confusion only eased in her adult years.
She only visited her father and his family in the US – he now has seven other children – for the first time three years ago. A year earlier, around the time of her wedding, was when she forgave him and the pair began mending bridges.
Along with her late grandmother Ntombithiyezinye Radebe, and her mother Buyi, she also dedicates the book to her manager-husband Kohl, whom she credits for her career successes.
She calls him “the great enabler, process-builder, map-developer, the path finder”.
She writes: “Mostly, I just want to thank you for choosing me as your Queen. You bless me with your very essence... Most of the time you are just pure sunshine… A book that keeps adding new chapters to it. A flower that keeps blooming again and again, just when I think it has no more beautiful layers to reveal. I guess this is what marriage does. It reveals more of a person to you.”
Speaking to The Times yesterday, Lira said she was now finally ready to add another chapter to her already burgeoning life opus – motherhood. “I’m now open to the idea of nesting. I had this entire year to wrap my head around the idea. You start to enjoy the rush of chasing the next goal, and with my schedule I couldn’t see where I could fit it in. I think motherhood will give me much depth and teach me many things,” she said.
Lira tells of her pain and joy in tell-all book
Without forgetting her revered craft and status as a singer-songwriter and fashionista (her name reportedly amasses over R50-million worth of media coverage annually in the country), the 34-year-old also tackles, at length, abandonment issues with her biological father, and even gives us a glimpse of what her wedding vows might have read like in a gushing dedication to her husband Robin Kohl.
She was only seven when her father, who had remarried, broke the news that he was emigrating to the US – without her. “This broke my heart as I did not understand, particularly because I was not going with them – yet his family was going to join him,” she writes. “For the first time I felt that I was not good enough, and this became an internal struggle for me for many years. I never understood why he left and I could not visit.”
The 10-times SA Music Awards (Samas) winner writes that this haunted her entire youth, and the confusion only eased in her adult years.
She only visited her father and his family in the US – he now has seven other children – for the first time three years ago. A year earlier, around the time of her wedding, was when she forgave him and the pair began mending bridges.
Along with her late grandmother Ntombithiyezinye Radebe, and her mother Buyi, she also dedicates the book to her manager-husband Kohl, whom she credits for her career successes.
She calls him “the great enabler, process-builder, map-developer, the path finder”.
She writes: “Mostly, I just want to thank you for choosing me as your Queen. You bless me with your very essence... Most of the time you are just pure sunshine… A book that keeps adding new chapters to it. A flower that keeps blooming again and again, just when I think it has no more beautiful layers to reveal. I guess this is what marriage does. It reveals more of a person to you.”
Speaking to The Times yesterday, Lira said she was now finally ready to add another chapter to her already burgeoning life opus – motherhood. “I’m now open to the idea of nesting. I had this entire year to wrap my head around the idea. You start to enjoy the rush of chasing the next goal, and with my schedule I couldn’t see where I could fit it in. I think motherhood will give me much depth and teach me many things,” she said.
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