Taylor Swift has a forever fan and friend in Ronan’s mom.
Maya Thompson — who goes by Mama Maya on social media — is speaking out about her ongoing relationship with the pop star after her late son, Ronan, served as the subject and inspiration for Swift’s heartbreaking 2012 charity single, “Ronan.” The song was recently rerecorded and given a permanent home on Swift’s Red (Taylor’s Version) album in 2021.
In a TikTok Q&A on Monday, Thompson addressed a fan question regarding whether she and Swift are still in touch.
“Do I still talk to Taylor? I do,” she said. “I’ll share some things, not everything, because I’m protective of her.”
Thompson, who is credited as a co-writer on “Ronan,” said that Swift provides “all my concert tickets.” She hailed the singer as “the best and so kind and so generous.”
The Arizona-based influencer continued, “12 years later, she’s still here. So I love her dearly.”
“Ronan” was written after Swift came across Thompson’s “Rockstar Ronan” blog posts about her son’s battle with stage four neuroblastoma. The real-life Ronan died in 2011 just days before his fourth birthday.
“Come on, baby, with me / We’re gonna fly away from here / Out of this curtained room / In this hospital grey, we’ll just disappear,” Swift sings on the track. “Come on, baby, with me / We’re gonna fly away from here / You were my best four years.”
Elsewhere in her Q&A, Thompson addressed whether Swift asked her permission prior to including the song on Red (Taylor’s Version) and releasing a subsequent lyric video.
“Yes, she did ask my permission and I was happy to give it to her,” Thompson said. “I never wanted that song to be in the hands of anybody but her, and it meant everything that she put it on Red (Taylor’s Version).”
She also noted that she hand-selected the photos for Swift’s video over the course of an emotional week.
“I was able to work with her picking out pictures and choosing the ones that I wanted to go in the lyric video,” she explained. “I never expected there to be a lyric video with this and it was really hard for me. It felt like I had opened up a vault to some of my most beautiful memories with Ronan, but also very painful stuff. But I spent about a week doing that, a week sobbing over a computer and just going through the most — what I thought were the most meaningful pictures to go along with the words to his song.”
Thompson also doubled down that should Swift deliver a live rendition of “Ronan” as a surprise song at any upcoming Eras Tour show, she would undoubtedly be there.
“Not only would I be there, but she would ask me beforehand because that is what she’s always done,” Thompson said. “That is how thoughtful she is.”
Thompson, who uses her TikTok platform to speak openly about grief, said that she “absolutely” understands the public’s interest in her connection to Swift.
“I do not get bothered by questions about her,” she said. “I will answer very few of them, simply because sometimes I just don’t want to talk about things and the other reason is I just don’t know the answer.”
Swift offered a rare performance of “Ronan” back in 2015 with Thompson in the audience at the Glendale, Arizona, stop on her 1989 Tour.
“In my opinion, one of the bravest things that a human being could ever do is to go through something absolutely unbearable and then share their experience with the world. And I think the braver you are, the more brutally honest you are,” Swift told the audience at the time.
“There’s a woman here tonight named Maya Thompson,” she continued. “And she has lived in this area and brought her kids up in this area. And I wouldn’t know half as much as I know about childhood cancer and childhood cancer research if she hadn’t shared her story about her son Ronan.”
Swift appeared to become emotional as she recalled reading Thompson’s blog “every night” and drawing inspiration for the song.
“I decided that her account of things was so heart wrenching and so honest that I took a lot of the things that she said and I put them into a song,” Swift explained. “And I put her as the co-writer, because she is the rightful co-writer of the song called ‘Ronan.'”
Since then, she noted, “I’ve had cancer hit really close to me in my family.”
Swift revealed in 2015 that her mom, Andrea Swift, had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Andrea’s cancer returned in March 2019 and, the following year, the singer said that doctors had discovered a brain tumor during Andrea’s chemotherapy treatments.
Around that time, Swift addressed the health battle on her Lover track, “Soon You’ll Get Better.”
More recently, Andrea was all smiles as she was seen cheering for Swift’s boyfriend, Travis Kelce, from the group’s private suite during Super Bowl LVIII in February.
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