A former member of En Vogue revealed she has been living out of her car for nearly three years.
Dawn Robinson opened up about her nontraditional living arrangement in a lengthy YouTube video posted to her official channel on Wednesday.
"For the past three -- almost three years, I have been living in my car," Robinson said in part. "I said it. Oh, my God. It's out. I've been living in my car."
The founding member of the R&B and pop girl group behind such 1990s hits such as "Hold On" and "Don't Let Go" said she started living out of her vehicle after moving out of her parents' home.
"If you remember, if you guys were with me, what, in 2020, I did like 105,000 interviews, and in the interim, I was living with my parents in Vegas, and that was wonderful until it wasn't," Robinson said.
The singer and musician said her relationship with her mother, in particular, deteriorated over time, and she eventually decided to move out.
"I love my mom, but ... I was like, 'I can't deal with this. Like, I respect her too much,'" Robinson continued. "I didn't understand it. I still don't, and it hurt me, so … I was like, let me get out of here."
At first, Robinson said a former co-manager encouraged her to move to Los Angeles and stay with them temporarily, but things didn't go as planned, and a one-night hotel stay turned into an extended eight-month stay as she attempted to find a suitable apartment to rent.
Robinson said the hotel stay cost "too much" to be a long-term solution and she began looking online for other solutions.
"I told my assistant one day, 'I have been researching car life. There's a whole community of people that live in their cars and a whole community of people who live in their [recreational vehicles] and a whole community of people that live in vans," Robinson said. "And I loved what I was seeing. I just thought, 'Wow, I could do that.'"
Robinson said she left the hotel she was staying in on March 9, 2022, and traveled to Malibu, California. As she settled into her new arrangement living out of her car, she said it quickly grew on her.
"I felt free," Robinson said. "I felt like, 'Wow, this is so different.' I felt like I was on a camping trip. It just felt like it was the right thing to do. I didn't regret it."
"I'm proud of me, and I'd rather be on my own right now and see my family when it's time and when things change," she added.
Robinson said elsewhere in the video that she has been documenting her "adventure" and "journey" and didn't want fans and followers to feel pity for her situation.
"I'm like, I wouldn't trade my experiences and what I've gone through for the world," said Robinson. "I miss everybody that I was connected to, but I needed to do this alone and without everybody's judgment or opinions and all of that stuff."
She added that if someone had told her during her En Vogue days that she would be embracing car life, she wouldn't have believed them.
"We're capable of so much more than we give ourselves credit for as human beings," Robinson said. "I challenge you to do the things that are scary. Do things that you don't think that you're capable of but you wanted to do."
