See an emotional Hoda join Rachel Platten on stage to sing ‘Fight Song’ at her Making Space retreat
To kick off the first night of TODAY’s Making Space Wellness Weekend with Hoda Kotb, Rachel Platten performed for an intimate crowd — and ended the evening with a sweet surprise.
As she sang her famous “Fight Song” and was about to finish the final refrain, she called out to Hoda and a few of the retreat’s other speakers to join her on stage, including TODAY special contributor Maria Shriver and It Cosmetics co-founder Jamie Kern Lima. You can watch the special moment here.
The women gathered around Platten’s piano for the emotional moment, as the crowd joined them in the final chorus and Hoda clapped along. For a few brief moments, the group even went acapella, led by Platten drumming on the piano.
“Someone had whispered to me right before I went on that Hoda wants to sing,” Platten tells TODAY.com when asked about her inspiration for the moment.
“I was like, ‘She does?’ I love her. I love that about her. She’s the best. Also, I could just see her … face, and this is her event, it felt like she deserves to be on the stage during her favorite song right now,” Platten recalls.
“Her joy is so infectious. I just thought it’d be like a triple dose of the energy we were already feeling.”
TODAY’s Making Space Wellness Weekend with Hoda Kotb, sponsored by Miraval Resorts & Spas, features speakers like Platten, as well as experts on happiness, breath work, neuroscience and a range of other topics. Around 150 guests have gathered in Austin, Texas from around the country to learn from Hoda, who’s been public about her own wellness journey, the experts and each other.
Before the performance, Platten and Hoda had a candid conversation about some of the singer’s mental health struggles, including a battle with postpartum depression after the births of both of her daughters, now 3 and 5.
“When I turned 40, I feel like everything fell apart,” Platten told Hoda. “It all just kind of shattered … the ability to keep up the charade of being so nice all the time, and all of a sudden, this angry version of me was here, and I was like, who is she? I don’t like her. But she was there, and she’s always been there … and I started to get to know her.”
“Something that I’m working on in my own life (is) just learning all of my different parts,” Platten continued. “There’s a part of me that is very much empowered and that wakes up excited … and then there’s parts of me that I’ve learned to get to know and not push down over the past seven years that are very much not that at all, and that didn’t want to be ignored anymore after a lifetime.”
“Starting to learn all of my different parts and love them and love myself fully has been the most healing work I’ve done in my life,” Platten added. “I love who I am now, all of me, because of it.”
Platten tells TODAY.com that this new phase of her wellness journey involves listening to her body and prioritizing what it needs.
“I try to ask my body, ‘Hey, what are you up for today?’ Sometimes it’s strong weights, and sometimes it’s gentle yoga, but it’s just that pause that I take to put a hand on my heart and just check in,” she explains. “I didn’t do that before. I would more just work out to fit into sample sizes or something, and now I work out to be strong and to carry my girls.”
She’s also incorporated some of her wellness practices, such as journaling, into her new album, “I Am Rachel Platten,” which she released last month.
“I’m always searching as a songwriter for what’s the truest thing and what is the rawest thing I can say. I think that that’s where the need is. That’s what I’m really interested in as a musician,” she says. “I’m extremely candid and extremely literal. … Some of these are journal entries, literally from my hand, tear-stained pages into a song.”
Asked what drew her to participating in TODAY’s Making Space Wellness Weekend with Hoda Kotb, Platten explains, “I love the idea of making space for ourselves. … It’s really hard to choose the time for you.”
