In Memoir, Mel B Tells of 'Saddest Moment'

Her daughter confronted her after suicide attempt
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 19, 2018 2:20 AM CST
Mel B Opens Up About 2014 Suicide Attempt
Melanie Brown "Mel B," left, and Stephen Belafonte arrive at the ESPY Awards at the Microsoft Theater on Wednesday, July 15, 2015, in Los Angeles.   (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)

The saddest moment in her life, Mel B says in new memoir Brutally Honest, was dealing with daughter Phoenix, then 15, after a suicide attempt in 2014. The Spice Girl says she woke up in the hospital to find her "furious" daughter asking "Why Mum? Why? Why?" In a memoir extract seen by the Sun, Mel B writes that all she wants "is for her to know how sorry I am, how lost I was and how I’ll never, ever abandon her again." In the memoir, the singer says she tried to take her own life by taking 200 aspirin pills because she was "emotionally battered" after years of abuse by then-husband Stephen Belafonte. She says he was threatening to release a "library" of sex tapes from their decade of marriage.

"As each pill goes into my mouth, I ask myself: 'Are you sure?' And I take another one. Ten, 20, 50, 100. 'Are you sure?'" she writes. "One hundred and 20. 'Are you sure?' 150. 'Are you sure?" But after taking the last pill, she writes, she realized: "Suicide was not the answer. I had to make my life count." She says she was left with bruises to her face and shoulder after throwing her weight against a jammed door while trying to seek help, USA Today reports. She was hospitalized with liver and kidney damage but, against the advice of doctors, appeared on The X-Factor three days later—without her wedding ring on. "I needed to be seen. I needed all those bruises to be seen," she writes. (In August, she said she would seek treatment for sex and alcohol addictions before the Spice Girls reunion tour.)

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