Last Monday on September 10th, Lady Gaga, a 32 year old pop singer and actress, opened up to Vogue Magazine about her struggles with sexual assault and its aftermath.

Lady Gaga, whose real name is Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta reveals she was raped when she was 19 years old. Gaga says it “took years” for her to understand what happened to her, and she stayed silent for seven years after the incident.

“I was traumatized by it,” Gaga says. “It was like I tried to erase it from my brain. And when it finally came out, it was like a big ugly monster.”

The singer and actress revealed that when her makeup came off, while she was auditioning for a new film, she felt that she was ugly. This insecurity has followed Gaga since the sexual assault 13 years ago.

Since, Lady Gaga has brought attention to sexual assault in many different ways. In her 2013 song “Swine,“ she describes her rage and the demoralization that she felt after being sexually assaulted as a teenager.

In September of 2015, Gaga released a powerful music video to accompany the song highlighting the incidents of sexual abuse in an attempt to destigmatize assault and discourage victim-blaming.

Even though Gaga has opened up about this situation multiple times, she has never revealed who the person who assaulted her is. When asked if she has ever confronted her assaulter, Gaga gave a negative response.

”I think it will terrify me..”

“It would paralyze me. I saw him one time in a store and I was paralyzed by fear. It wasn’t until I was a little bit older that I went, ‘Wow, that was really messed up.’” Gaga told Howard Stern in 2014 interview.

Lady Gaga also explains the PTSD symptoms that have plagued her to this day.

“ I feel stunned. Or stunted. You know that feeling when you’re on a roller coaster and you’re just about to go down the really steep slope? That fear and the drop in your stomach? My diaphragm seizes up,” she explained. “ Then I have a hard time breathing, and my whole body goes into a spasm. And I begin to cry. That’s what it feels like for trauma victims every day, and it’s… miserable. I always say that trauma has a brain. And it works its way into everything that you do.”

Lady Gaga has showed the world that she is a strong woman for opening up about the sexual assault that has affected her life. So often people say women aren’t strong and that we just hide our feelings, but Gaga showed the world that even through tough times we can get through our problems.