Demi Lovato Talks 'Complicated' Relationship with Late Dad on Father's Day: 'Make the Call'

Demi Lovato is opening up about their strained relationship with their late dad, acknowledging on Instagram Stories Father's Day that the holiday wasn't an easy one.

"Trying not to wake up sad ... Trying to stay positive. Today is always so difficult," the 28-year-old singer wrote in a slide posted Sunday. "This is for anyone else who's lost a father, can't be with their dad, didn't know their dad, or anyone who has a tough relationship with their dad."

They continued: "I spent many years on this holiday wondering whether or not I should call him. Take it from me, if you can, make the call."

Lovato wrote that some days they regretted not calling their dad, "but other days I'm proud of myself for holding my boundary because I was doing what was best for me and my mental health."

"It's complicated, and I wish it were different but this made me into the person I am today," Lovato wrote, adding that their "heart goes out to the people still holding their boundaries as well."

In separate slides shared to Instagram, Lovato shared photos of themself sitting on their dad's lap as a child, while snippets from their song "Butterfly" (reportedly inspired by the fractured relationship) played in the background.

Their late father, Patrick Lovato, died in June 2013. In a 2015 video series about the making of her album Confident, the singer shared that they were "conflicted" about the death of the man who inspired the song, "Father."

"I was very conflicted when he passed because he was abusive," Lovato said in 2015. "He was mean, but he wanted to be a good person, and he wanted to have his family."

Lovato added that their dad endured struggles with mental illness that made his role as a patriarch difficult to maintain.

"He knew he wasn't capable of raising a family, and it was because of his mental illness," they said. "To know that it wasn't fully his fault really was saddening to me. I wanted to write about it. I wanted to process it."

Lovato also touched on their late father in a heartfelt personal essay for Vogue penned last year.

"There was the anniversary of my father's death, which is a couple of days after Father's Day — a really hard time of year for me," wrote the singer, who has been open about their "abusive" and "mean" father. "But this year, something happened."

"I wrote a gratitude letter to him, thanking him for all the things that I got from him," they explained. "It was this beautiful release of all the resentments I had toward him. I realized, for the first time, that I wasn't going to have daddy issues for the rest of my life."

Lovato's mother Dianna De La Garza, who was remarried in 1995 to Eddie De La Garza, detailed several instances of domestic abuse by her first husband in her 2018 memoir.

In the 2015 video, the pop star said that when their mom married De La Garza, their dad acknowledged that he was happy for the positive influence in his children's lives.

"When my mom married my stepdad [Eddie De La Garza], he still had this huge heart where he would say, 'I'm so glad Eddie's taking care of you and doing the job that I wish I could do,'" Lovato said at the time.

In a final image shared to Instagram Stories on Sunday, Lovato offered a heartfelt message of gratitude to her stepfather, posting an image of the two along with the caption: "To the man who raised me, I love you so much. Thank you @eddie.delagarza. Happy Father's Day dad."