Born Brave

“Don't you ever let a soul in the world tell you that you can't be exactly who you are.” - Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga visited the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence to have a candid discussion about emotional health at the Emotion Revolution Summit, a partnership with her Born This Way Foundation. She spoke frankly about her experiences with celebrity and her struggle with depression:

I invented myself, Lady Gaga—I curated my life to be an expression of my pain. This is how I overcame my depression, is by creating somebody that I felt was stronger than me. But…nothing was able to fix how I was genetically made. I was born this way. No matter how much success you have, no matter how many opportunities, fame, fortune—no matter how many people accept you, to your face, the person that really needs to accept you is you.

"[This is] why we're here today," Gaga continued in her speech. "We're going to talk about why it's important to accept yourself, why it's important to empower yourself and why it's important that emotional intelligence is taken seriously."