Melanie "Mel B" Brown has lived through a lot of trauma over the last few years, and although she's hit some extremely low points, she is now stronger than ever and sharing her story.
The Spice Girls singer is gearing up to release her memoir, Brutally Honest, and as the title suggests, she does not hold back at all.
In the book, the America's Got Talent judge opens up about a time in her life when she was in a very dark place.
"My life is a mess and I want out."
"It's Thursday night, 11 December 2014. I've come back from dinner with my husband Stephen. Tomorrow I'm going to The X Factor. It will be the red-carpet launch for the final weekend," she writes in an excerpt published in The Sun.
"I'll be wearing a beautiful dress, my hair and make-up will be perfect. But if you want the absolute truth, I don't care about any of it. My life is a mess and I want out."
At the time, Brown was married to then-husband Stephen Belafonte, and was dealing with years of emotional and physical abuse at his hands.
Feeling "emotionally battered," she decided to take her own life by swallowing 200 pills.
"Here I am, 39 years of age, staring in a mirror in the en-suite bathroom of my rented house in Kensington, London, holding an open bottle of aspirin from the stash I've stockpiled over the years, putting one pill after another into my mouth," she writes. "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?'"
It wasn't until she reached the last pill that she realized that she made a mistake.
"I can't remember the pain but I can still remember the fear, panic and absolute confusion in my head," Brown writes. "Then everything started to go black and I collapsed to my knees. I could feel the life in me starting to drain away."
"Suicide was not the answer. I had to make my life count."
Brown was immediately transported to a hospital, where doctors found that her kidneys and liver have suffered some damage.
She was advised to take a break from her X-Factor gig, but three days later, Brown returned to the judges panel without her wedding ring and she showed off the bruises she sustained.
"Suicide was not the answer. I had to make my life count," she adds.
Brown admits that the saddest moment of her life came when her daughter Phoenix, who was 15 at the time kept asking why her mother did what she did.
Now, all Brown wants is for her daughter "to know how sorry I am, how lost I was and how I'll never, ever abandon her again."
The singer also explains that her friends, including her fellow Spice Girls tried to reach out to her, but she refused to talk to them.
"I wasn't ready, and I was too ashamed," she confesses.
Moving on
It took the death of her father for Brown to build up the courage to leave her toxic marriage.
She writes:
"I always knew there was only one man who could save me. Martin Brown. My dad. I hadn't spoken to him since that awful row at our old house in Leeds in December 2014, and the anger and disappointment I saw in his eyes stabbed at my heart like a knife.Despite all of that, I was his daughter, the little girl he had adored more than life itself. He might hate me, but I knew that his love still burned away underneath. In the end, it was my dad who gave me the strength to leave Stephen."
In 2017, Brown finally filed for divorce from Belafonte, but it's been a nasty battle for money and the custody of their children.
In August, revealed that she has been Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and has entered rehab for treatment.
Things have since been looking up for Brown, who will be reuniting with the Spice Girls and going on tour next year.