Photo: @siamusic/Instagram, Kathy Hutchins/Shutterstock.com
Sia never thought she'd be a mother, but then she became an adoptive mom and grandma within months.
By John Sundholm — Written on Dec 22, 2022
Sia's an iconic musician who's written hit songs for everyone from Rihanna and Britney Spears to Beyoncé and Katy Perry, and is known worldwide for hits of her own like "Chandelier" and "Elastic Heart."
But none of that compares to the all-important job Sia took on for herself: adoptive mother of two orphaned teenage boys and, months later, grandmother to twins.
And it all happened in the space of just a few months, in the most heartstring-tugging way possible.
Struggles with infertility left the 47-year-old music icon assuming she'd never be a mother, but one fateful day in front of the television suddenly changed everything.
Sia adopted her two sons after seeing one of them on TV in a documentary about the foster care system.
The way Sia's family grew has all the trappings of an Oscar-bait Hollywood drama.
She was watching a documentary about foster care when a 16-year-old boy onscreen caught her attention—and she knew instantly she had to do something for him.
As she put it in a 2020 interview, "when I saw him, I said to myself, 'That's my son.'"
Knowing the difficulty teenagers face in getting adopted, the singer set about tracking him down. She finally found him when he was 18 and about to age out of the foster system with nowhere to go.
She told the boy she wanted to adopt him, and since he was legally an adult, he left with her on the spot.
But he had one huge request for his new mom.
"[H]e asked...if he could also bring his cousin Che, who had lived with him in a group home," she told InStyle. Without hesitation, she agreed. "I had two spare bedrooms, so I said, "Sure!"
Che went home with her on the spot as well, making her the instantaneous mother of two.
It turned out that Che wasn't her son's cousin after all, but rather a friend he didn't want to leave in the lurch.
But Sia said she "didn't care at all," because she feels the entire thing was predestined. She told InStyle, "I've realized over the past year that Che was meant to be my son too."
Sia's "instant family" came after years of painful struggles with infertility that left her thinking motherhood was off the table.
Sia has been open about her long-held desire to be a mother and her affinity for children, most notably her frequent collaborator, dancer Maddie Ziegler. Sia is also Ziegler's godmother.
Sia's desire for kids and difficulty conceiving led her to try several rounds of IVF, none of which were successful in helping her get pregnant.
And after her divorce from documentary filmmaker and golfer Erik Anders Lang fell apart in 2016, she was unable to use the remaining embryos created during her fertility treatments.
The blow was so profound Sia said it took "three or four years basically in bed by myself" to recover from it all.
It was during that time of grief and recovery that she saw the documentary that changed her life forever.
Little did she know, more change was in store than she could have ever expected.
Just months after adopting, everything in Sia's life changed a second time — she became a grandmother.
In June of 2020, Sia announced that one of her sons—the famously private singer hasn't revealed which one — had just had twins, making her a grandma twice over.
Discussing it on DJ Zane Lowe's podcast, Sia joked that becoming a grandma twice over at the age of 44 was all a bit of shock, telling Lowe, "I’m a f--king grandma!...I’m just immediately horrified.”
But the super-fast growth of what she called her "instant family" didn't seem to slow Sia down one bit.
She's been outspoken about how her experiences with the failings of the foster system have left her "jaded"—so much so that shortly after her grandchildren's birth, she told InStyle she was thinking of adopting again.
And despite how crazily it all came together, Sia said she wouldn't have it any different.
She told InStyle, "I've realized that this is exactly the way that motherhood was supposed to happen for me."
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.