Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour Being The Only Thing That Gave Her Purpose – The Very Important Conversation On Mental Health And Healing

Throughout her 20 year career, Taylor Swift has been known for her breakup songs that literally every girl can relate to. No matter her age, no matter her background, no matter where she’s from, no matter her education or work experience, one way or another she’ll relate to a song or two; maybe even three. Her talent is unmatched. No album of her is ever the same, and she has 12 in total thus far. She’s more than just an artist. She’s a businesswoman. Her genius mindset landed her craft generate over a billion dollars.

Not only is Swift a musical genius, but she’s also an advocate and ally. More particularly, she’s been a great ally for the LGBTQ community. This recognition was marked by her outspoken support, advocacy for legislation like the Equality Act, inclusion of LGBTQ artists in her work (like the “You Need to Calm Down” video), and creating safe spaces for queer fans during her Eras Tour, despite some academic discussions about the nature and depth of pop culture allyship. She shifted from past political silence to vocal support, driven by a desire to protect the community, making her a significant figure for many fans and organizations like GLAAD. To break it down more thoroughly:

Key Actions & Statements:

• Music & Videos: Songs like “You Need to Calm Down” (YNTCD) directly address homophobia, featuring LGBTQ+ celebrities and promoting the GLAAD organization. “Welcome to New York” and “The Man” also touch on themes of acceptance and equality.

• Political Advocacy: She actively campaigned for the Equality Act, encouraging fans to contact senators and supporting voter registration drives.

• On-Stage Support: During her Eras Tour, she designates her concerts as safe, celebratory spaces for her LGBTQIA+ fans and speaks out against harmful legislation, urging research into politicians’ records.

• Public Statements: She expressed a realization that she needed to use her platform to advocate for communities she wasn’t part of, prompting her to become more vocal.

• Donations & Appearances: Swift has donated to and supported groups like GLAAD and made appearances at their events, such as presenting an award to Ruby Rose. 

Perspectives on Her Allyship:

• Positive: Many fans and groups praise her massive influence, authenticity, and concrete actions, seeing her as a powerful advocate who makes LGBTQ+ issues mainstream.

• Critical: Some analyses suggest her allyship, while impactful, fits within a broader trend of “neoliberal feminism” or corporate appropriation, raising questions about how deeply it connects to the lived struggles of marginalized queer people, especially trans individuals. 

Swift’s journey reflects a significant shift in her public persona, positioning her as a prominent, albeit sometimes debated, ally in the LGBTQ rights movement. I’m only merely mentioning this factor about her as my previous 4 (!) blog entered had to do with LGBTQ subject matters. And I know that Pride Month isn’t until June, but honestly, LGBTQ matters need to be discussed ALL the time. As Swift herself sang, “Shade never made anybody less GAY.”

As I looked back on Swift’s career and allyship she’s created for the LGBTQ community in more recent years, I felt the urge to investigate her life and career further, especially following the release of her documentary series, The End Of An Era, released in December. In it, she opened up like she never did before as she looked back on her time on the Eras tour, which lasted a whopping two years.

Quite a lot happened during the tour’s run. And when I say a lot, I mean A LOT. Let’s start by discussing backup singer Jeslyn Gorman, who joined Swift’s band during her Reputation tour back in 2018. She missed six months of the Eras tour due to a breast cancer diagnosis. Gorman said, ‘I was diagnosed with breast cancer and obviously it was devastating. But every weekend, we had a show so I still flew to the next city, did a show with everyone and, like, in the middle week when we weren’t doing shows, I would fly back to L.A. and just have biopsies and poked and prodded. Learned really what I had to do treatment wise and then hopped back on stage and pretended like nothing was happening.’

During the tour, Swift went through two breakups. First, she and actor Joe Alwyn broke up in April 2023 after six years together. Then she and Matty Healy broke things off a few months of courtship. She said of that time, ‘I definitely think that writing music is some kind of therapy. Every record represents something different. The Tortured Poets album is like this purge of just, like, everything … everything bad that I felt for two years. It was a really rough time in my life, so the songs reflect that. Feeling like I’m not a person, I’m just this big conglomerate that no one sees as a real human being and, like, especially not men that I date. And in the whole process just being like, ‘Nothing works. There is no one for me in the world.’ Men will let you down, the Eras tour never will.’

We all know her breakups are long gone in the history books, now that Swift is now engaged to footballer Travis Kelce. The two started dating in August 2023. Their beginnings were very interesting, to say the least. Kelce went to one of Swift’s concerts and made a friendship bracelet for her with his number on it, but it never got to her. He then shouted out the singer on his podcast New Heights. Swift’s mom, Andrea told the story of how she played cupid. She said, ‘I’m looking at the headlines and perusing around what’s on the Internet and I see that this guy came to your show and he brought a friendship bracelet and wants to meet you. And so of course I call up my resident expert on the Kansas City Chiefs — my cousin Robyn — and I go, ‘Tell me about this guy named Travis Kelce,’ and she goes, ‘Oh my God, he’s the nicest guy. And you know what? He really loves his mom.’ And I went, ‘ding ding ding ding.’ And then I said, ‘Now how in the world am I get her to meet him?’’

While her romance with Kelce is a movie-like ‘happy ending’ for Swift’s love story arc for sure – one that she’s been writing endless amount of songs about for the past 20 years – it’s something else that I feel compelled to discuss, and it’s her mental health. It’s a subject that was heavily transcribed in her “Tortured Poets Departments” album. The level of self-loathing displayed on this album is heartbreaking and relatable. It was an album dedicated to the fans listening who’d gone through the same or similar experiences.

From people pleasing habits to body image struggles and navigating rejection, Swift has experienced many of the same struggles as other women in their 20’s and 30’s. I know I have. Listening to her music throughout the years has made me feel like she’s a friend; like she’s inviting me to dinner for a girl chat. That’s with the mere fact that I have absolutely nothing in common with her. I mean, she’s the most successful female artist in the world. And me… I’m just a just a woman with a little online blog. And yet, her relatability is uncanny. She has the ability to transform deeply personal experiences with love, heartbreak, friendship, and self-doubt into universally understood, narrative-driven songs, making fans feel heard and validated, as if she’s “film scoring their lives” with specific yet relatable details and emotions that mirror their own journeys. Her consistent authenticity, willingness to be vulnerable, and creation of intimate “Easter eggs” for fans foster a strong, communal bond, making listeners feel like they’re growing up alongside her, not just consuming pop music. To break it down more thoroughly:

Key Reasons for Relatability:

• Honest Storytelling: She turns specific life events and feelings—like first loves, betrayals, anxiety, and self-discovery—into detailed narratives that listeners can apply to their own lives.

• Emotional Vulnerability: Swift vocalizes complex, often unspoken emotions and struggles (heartbreak, self-doubt, societal pressure), creating a safe space for fans to connect with their own feelings and feel less alone, explain First Session and Vogue India.

• Underdog Persona: She often portrays herself as a hardworking, rule-following “good girl” striving to meet expectations, a relatable “pleaser” battling external pressures and internal fears of failure, a perspective resonates with many, says The Atlantic.

• Authenticity & Consistency: Despite fame, she maintains a genuine, grounded personality and consistently writes her own songs, making her seem like a trusted friend sharing diary-like entries, as explained by a Berklee article.
• Communal Experience: Her music and fandom create a sense of belonging, with shared rituals, inside jokes, and a “church-like” communal feeling at concerts that combats modern isolation, according to University of Oregon.

• Growing Up With Her: Many fans grew up alongside her, from country beginnings to pop superstardom, making her music a soundtrack to their own coming-of-age, writes The Berklee College of Music. 

I remember vividly watching Swift’s Miss Americana documentary, where she opened up about her mental health struggles; ones that led her to develop an eating disorder back in 2015. She said in the 2020 film, ‘When you’re living for the approval of strangers, and that is where you derive all of your joy and fulfillment, one bad thing can cause everything to crumble.’ She questioned her own self-worth. She sacrificed her own happiness for the sake of others. She heavily relied on other people’s approval.

Social media can be absolutely exhaustingly brutal; and it was exactly that to Swift’s existence. In 2015, she went on her 1989 world tour, and she was drastically thinner than her usual self. That was the time in her life when she was starving herself to the point that she felt like she was going to faint every time she performed on stage. She said that she’d sometimes react to seeing hurtful tabloid comments about her body or a photo she didn’t like by engaging in restrictive eating. She shared that her focus on being thin impacted her mental and physical well-being. She’s since worked to release herself from focusing on comments people make about her body and instead focusing solely on nourishing and loving her body as is. 

Oh, to be a woman…

Being a woman is hard. It was always hard, but it’s especially hard in the age of social media and the internet. There’s a constant pressure to be perfect; to lead the perfect life. She’s expected to have the perfect body, the perfect face, the perfect fashion, the perfect boyfriend that will eventually be her husband and the father of her child(ren). And that’s for a “regular” woman; a woman like me – completely unknown to the world. Now imagine being a woman like Swift.

In 2026, the pressure to be “the perfect woman” is often described as the “Superwoman trap“– the impossible expectation to excel simultaneously in professional, domestic, and personal spheres. These pressures are fueled by historical gender roles, modern workforce shifts, and the constant “societal feedback loop” of social media. To break it down more thoroughly:

1. The “Double Shift” Expectation

Women are frequently expected to maintain traditional domestic roles while also succeeding in modern careers. 

• The “Workplace vs. Home” Paradox:Psychotherapists note that women are often expected to perform the roles of their mothers (domestic care) while maintaining the professional standards of their fathers.

• Unpaid Labor: As of 2025/2026, studies continue to show that women perform significantly more unpaid domestic work than men, leading to chronic stress and “the double shift”. 

2. Aesthetic and Physical Standards

Social media remains a primary driver of body image dissatisfaction and the drive for physical perfection. 

• Unrealistic Beauty Standards: 92% of teen girls surveyed in recent years expressed a desire to change their physical appearance, often due to photoshopped or highly curated images.

• Contradictory Cues: Society pressures women to be “hot but not slutty” and “skinny but curvy,” creating a narrow and often unattainable ideal. 

3. Emotional and Social Policing

The “perfect woman” ideal is often used as a tool for social control, pathologizing those who do not conform. 

• “The Perfect/Crazy Dichotomy”: Women who express anger or strong boundaries are often labeled “hysterical,” “difficult,” or “unstable,” whereas those who are submissive and agreeable are praised as “perfect”.

• The Motherhood Catch-22: Working mothers are often labeled “neglectful,” while stay-at-home mothers are questioned about their “wasted potential”. 

4. Psychological Impacts

The relentless pursuit of these standards has severe mental health consequences: 

• Impostor Syndrome: Many women, particularly women of color, report feeling like “intellectual frauds” despite high success, often due to feeling they must work twice as hard to meet societal standards.

• Chronic Guilt: Surveys indicate that a majority of working mothers feel guilt regardless of their choices—feeling guilty for not spending enough time with children and for taking time for themselves.

• Burnout: The World Health Organization (WHO) identifies burnout as a state of chronic stress that disproportionately affects women trying to “do it all”. 

There’s absolutely no such thing as the “perfect woman”. Even Swift herself isn’t perfect. She never claimed herself to be in her entire 20 year career. The entire world, however, claimed she had to be. Most of that world entails of men’s creature. And speaking of men, we can’t forget how Kanye West and his then-wife Kim Kardashian’s by betraying her in 2016 when they released a heavily edited version of their phone conversation where Swift gave him permission to use her name in a song. In the video she agreed, but in actuality, he omitted to say to her that he’d use the line, “I made that bitch famous.” To be more precise, the exact lyrics were, “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex/ Why? I made that bitch famous.” He also never played the song for her. She heard it with the rest of the world. For the next four years, Swift was villainized online, being called a liar, amongst other things. That was until the unedited, unfiltered 20 minute call was released to the public. Swift called that infamous phone call to be a “phrase job” and had said that it took her down psychologically.

The public went against Swift, and in turn, she went into hiding. After a 3 hiatus from the music industry, she reemerged herself in 2017 with her fittingly titled album Reputation. It was anything like she’d ever done before. Previously telling Billboard of that time in her life, ‘I moved to a foreign country. I didn’t leave a rental house for a year. I was afraid to get on phone calls. I pushed away most people in my life because I didn’t trust anyone anymore. I went down really, really hard.’

While the bad reputation Kanye West and Kim Kardashian had put on Swift was indefinitely dismissed 2020, the drama didn’t end there. That same year, she had a very public fall out the owner of her former label Big Machine Records, Scott Borchetta, who’d managed her since she was 15 years old, over his sale of her catalog to Scooter Braun. Swift told the publication, ‘I’ve also learned there’s no point in actively trying to quote unquote defeat your enemies. Trash takes itself out every single time.’

For a time, Swift truly thought her career was over. But it was far from it. With every year, every album release, every tour, and every appearance, Swift’s success only grew. She’d reached a success rate she herself didn’t think was possible, especially with the numbers she’d reached with the Eras tour. Those numbers helped her regain ownership of what was so abruptly taken away from her – her life’s work. All 6 albums that were released through Big Machine were FINALLY hers.

Music helps us better understand our own experiences, express them and work through them. It influences our view of the world, of ourselves and others, developing skills of empathy, resilience and compassion. It helps us understand concepts that we may not have mastery or experience of yet. Research has long shown that listening to music can reduce anxiety, blood pressure, and pain, as well as improve sleep, boost mood, and increase productivity. That the exact impact of Swift’s Eras tour. What none of us knew at the time was that the Eras tour was the only good thing going on in Swift’s life at the time. Its massive success largely grew out of her most painful life experiences, like her two breakups with Joe Alwyn and Matty Healy.

It’s important to note that Swift and Alwyn had broken up just as Swift went on tour in April 2023 after a six year courtship. Swift was having to go on stage every night to make others happy while she herself was heartbroken. She saw a future with Alwyn. She thought he was the man of her dreams. She thought she’d grow old with him. She’d written songs about it that had been featured in several of her albums. “Her songs delve into struggles she has faced, including heartbreak, self-doubt, and anxiety, creating a safe space for her listeners to connect without fear. “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart” was a song that gave us all a different feeling and vibe into her life with Alwyn. She put on three hour shows almost everyday for thousands of fans. Sometimes, it proved to be difficult for her. She was seen crying during some of her performances, especially at the beginning of her tour run. But she did it anyways. Nothing and no one was going to stop her.

In her docuseries, Swift emphasized that the Eras tour was the only good thing in her life that kept her going through her hardships. What she didn’t realize, however, was that SHE was the one who’s healed the entire world through not just her Eras tour, but her music as a whole. She’s healed girls and women everywhere through bullying, school and college years, love, heartbreak, friendships, self-doubt, self-loathing, and more. She’s even helped mothers connect with her daughters on a deeper level.

That in itself is a superpower…