Drake White suffered a brain bleed during a concert in 2019 that left the 38-year-old singer paralyzed on his left side. Over the last two-and-a-half years, White has talked about his struggle back to the stage, but he recently went into even more detail about what that process was like.
“There were times that I didn’t feel like going on,” White told People. “I just wanted to quit.”
He didn’t think he would ever walk again. When White hit rock bottom, his wife – brimming with hope – picked him up.
“Alex was truly the person that, when I was mad and upset about not being able to walk, and I didn’t know what was going to happen to me, she would be the one who would then take charge,” he said. “She would say, ’I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. You’re going to learn to walk again. You’re going to play again. You’re going to get back on stage. We’re going to have kids. You’re going to hold those kids over your head. That’s what’s going to happen.’ ”
Then his wife took his recovery into her own hands. She started taping the singer’s left leg to her own in an attempt to remind him – and his muscles – what it felt like to walk.
“She would just keep doing that until it registered in my brain that we were walking again,” White told People. “She helped me back on my feet and got me back on stage, along with the help of my mom and (Alex’s) mom and my aunt and so many other incredible women.”
These days, White is walking again and writing new songs, scheduling concerts, and planning for a new album.
The strong women who carried him through his emotional and physical recovery inspired his new song, “Power of a Woman.”
“It doesn’t matter if it is the waitresses at my favorite greasy spoon Wendell Smith’s (restaurant) or the vice president of the United States, there’s just so many powerful women out there,” White said. “I just wanted to glorify women in a song.”