Last week, Summer Walker announced on social media that she was ending her First and Last Tour early, due to her public battle with social anxiety. About 20 of the dates have been canceled, with the promise to finish up 9 more shows. “Unfortunately, I’m not going to be able to finish this tour because it doesn’t really coexist with my social anxiety and my introverted personality,” she said. “But I really hope that people understand and respect that at the end of the day that I’m a person—I have feelings, I get tired, I get sad, and it’s just a lot.”
Walker has never been shy about her experience with social anxiety. Soon after canceling the tour, over the weekend (Nov.17), Walker took home best new artist honors at the 2019 Soul Train Music Awards, giving her fans a brief and rare glimpse at her speaking publicly on live television. After keeping her acceptance speech very short, due to the severe social anxiety, Walker was met with some criticism by viewers in her comments who didn’t believe her disorder to be legit.
Admitting that her social anxiety almost kept her from even attending the awards, Walker was very hurt by the comments and responded via Instagram. “You know, the scariest s–t I’ve been witnessing is that most of the women leaving negative comments like ‘it’s an act,’ ‘I don’t have the right to act like this b/c I’m famous’, ‘b***h you slow’ or just flat out making fun of me for being vulnerable, HAVE CHILDREN” she wrote on Monday (Nov. 18).
Walker admitted it made her sad to see that some of these same people would be or already are parents to kids possibly suffering from mental health issues, but they refuse to acknowledge its legitimacy.
“It makes me feel soo bad cause it’s clear that if the children are developing or struggling with any type of mental disorder such as anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, it’ll be brushed to the side and will never receive any treatment because it’ll just be ‘an act.'”
Check out Summer Walkers acceptance speech and Instagram posts down below:
