‘Everything is uphill’: Shakira on single parenting, juggling music career after breakup with Gerard Pique

The Waka Waka singer said that she was now in the survival stage of her parenting journey

Sometimes being a single mom and the rhythm of being a pop star aren’t compatible, singer-songwriter Shakira has said over a year after she and ex-Barcelona star Gerard Pique called it quits.

The Columbian star, who shares two sons with Pique, also shed light on how she strikes a balance between her duties as a mother and her music career.

Shakira lives with her two sons — Milan, 9, and Sasha, 7 — in Miami where she moved in April 2022. In an interview with Billboard, Shakira said that she has to put her kids to bed and go to the recording studio, adding that “everything is uphill”.

“I like to be a present mom and I need to be there every moment with my children — take them to school, have breakfast with them, take them to play dates. And aside from that, I have to make money,” she said.

Shakira said that it’s constant juggling when you don’t have a husband who could stay home with the kids. Post her split from Pique, Shakira described that period as the “darkest” of her life. But the Columbian star now equates herself with a cat with “more than nine lives”.

“Whenever I think I can’t get any better, I suddenly get a second wind,” she said. “I’ve gone through several stages — denial, anger, pain, frustration, anger again, pain again.”

The Waka Waka singer said that she was now in the survival stage. “And it’s a reflection stage,” she said, adding a stage where she wants to work hard and have time with her children.

Speaking of her kids, Shakira said that they loved it here, adding that in Barcelona, they carried the weight of being ‘the children of…’. She further said that in Spain, paparazzi would surround them every single day, making it difficult for kids.

The situation is completely different in Miami, where Shakira says they are normal kids enjoying normalcy.

“And because they’re sociable and pretty open, it was easy for them to adapt,” the star added.