Brooke Eden caught the attention of many in 2021 when she announced on Instagram that she had been in a lesbian relationship with Hillary Hoover for nearly five years. Since coming out, the country-pop artist has been taking Nashville by storm, performing at tours, festivals, and the Grand Ole Opry. Lately, she's been sharing a new journey with fans, the journey of motherhood.
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In 2024, she shared that touring has become a lot more than just a job for her. Performing on stage has become something that's brought her family together, including her wife and tour manager Hilary Hoover, and their baby Beckham. The couple made the decision last year to conceive their son through in vitro fertilization, and have Hoover carry the baby through pregnancy.
She told People, "I think [motherhood has] taught me that I'm stronger than I thought I was. I can do more than I thought I could," she said. "You know, it's wild being a country artist and also being a mom and wanting to be a hundred percent in both of those worlds."
Well, she's been doing a great job of balancing the two. Just this summer, the singer posted on Instagram that she got to live out "the Pride Month of [her] actual dreams."
"We got to perform everywhere- from LA to DC to Nashville to Texas, and I got to do it as a mom, wife and an artist unapologetically being myself. I'm so grateful to all the trailblazers who came before us who took the public humiliation, family rejection, fear, and literal jail time to stand up for equality and the human right to love."
Sharing Her Truth Wasn't Always Easy for Eden
Although she's unapologetically sharing her story now, back in 2021, the singer was worried about how fans would react to her coming out. She'd been in a relationship with Hoover since 2015, but thought that revealing the secret would jeopardize her career in country music. "So as soon as people started to find out, I was told like, if I wanted to keep my career, then I would need to keep my relationship quiet," she said. Eden explained that it "felt like living two lives" a lot of the time, and that being secretive about her identity caused her to deal with a lot of mental struggles.
It wasn't until reading a passage about integrity from "Untamed," a memoir by Glennon Doyle, that she decided it was finally time. "I was reading a paragraph that she wrote about integrity. And she was like, you know, integrity. [It's] basically defined is when you are to the world who you are in your house," she said. "It hit me like a ton of bricks. Being in the closet doesn't make me a better person, being in the closet makes me half of a person, a shell of a human."
Well, the country singer is thriving now and has done a fantastic job of combining both sides of her life since then. We hope her story is encouraging to those who are scared to share their own, and is a testament that yes, it is possible to be a touring country music artist, a wife, and a mom all at once.
Photo by: Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Images
