Inside Carly Simon’s Martha’s Vineyard Retreat Where She ‘Withdrew from View’

Music legend and “You’re So Vain” singer Carly Simon has revealed she has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease—while opening up about the ways in which she has been “learning to live” with her condition after “withdrawing from public view.”

Simon, 83, who is originally from New York City, shared the news of her diagnosis in a public statement on July 27, revealing at the same time that she has also undergone surgery for basal cell carcinoma, a kind of skin cancer, while receiving treatment for Parkinson’s.

The singer, who is based in Martha’s Vineyard, did not detail when exactly she was diagnosed, but explained that she has taken time away from the spotlight in order “to adjust” to her new normal.

“It has taken me some time to understand the diagnosis, to adjust to it, and to decide how much I wanted to say about it publicly,” she shared, according to The New York Times.

“Parkinson’s is different for everyone, and it can be unpredictable. Some days I’m so tired I can’t get the day moving at all. On others, it gives me a little more room to move, think, work, and feel like myself.”

Speaking about her first symptoms, Simon revealed that her “problems began with arthritis in both knees and one hip,” explaining that she’d had all three joints replaced in an attempt to deal with her pain. However, even after those procedures, her “mobility continued to worsen” and she began struggling to sit down in low chairs or stand up if she was seated on a “deep couch.”

“Eventually, there were periods when I could not walk without considerable help. My family and I knew that something more was going on. After an extensive evaluation at the Mayo Clinic, I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s,” she continued.

Parkinson’s is a nervous system disorder that gradually worsens over time and affects many parts of the body, including movement, according to the Mayo Clinic.

However, Simon explained that the impact of the disease goes far beyond just the physical, revealing that it can also “bring anxiety, depression, exhaustion, and apathy,” a feeling that she said she has found “particularly strange to deal with.”

“You can find yourself lying there like a starfish drying in the sun, arms pointing in all directions, while nothing inside is telling you to get up, read, watch, write, sing, call someone, or do much of anything at all,” she said.

“I do not consider Parkinson’s a gift or a blessing. It is neither. It is difficult, frustrating, and sometimes frightening. I am still learning how to live with it and how to accept it without feeling that I have surrendered something essential,” she added.

In the midst of her Parkinson’s diagnosis, the singer was also diagnosed with skin cancer, for which she had to undergo a procedure that she said “affected [her] appearance and made [her] more self-conscious about being seen in public.” Her response, therefore, was simply to “withdraw from public view,” which she described as the most “palatable reaction” she could think of.

“If a person is allowed to hibernate during both winter and summer, then I have become an all-season bear,” she joked.

Still, Simon hasn’t allowed the disease to stop her from pursuing her love of music, explaining that she has “not stopped living … and working” while dealing with her health battles behind closed doors—writing and recording her first new original album in 18 years, “Comes in Waves.”

The singer went on to pay tribute to her family, friends, and medical support team for rallying around her, thanking them for providing the “love and patience” she needed to get through this difficult time.

While the singer—who has won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, and multiple Grammy Awards—did not reveal where she has been spending most of her time in recent years, however it’s thought that she has been hunkering down at her longtime compound in Martha’s Vineyard, where she has lived for several decades.

Simon, who spent her childhoods vacationing in Martha’s Vineyard, where she met her first husband, James Taylor, moved to the Massachusetts enclave after the two wed in 1972 and the pair became two of the most famous fixtures in the community, creating an enormous compound in Vineyard Haven.

Taylor, whose family had also spent a great deal of time in the area when he was younger, purchased a huge 175-acre plot of wooded land there when he was just 22, per The New York Times, and built what would eventually become his marital compound, where he and Simon welcomed their two kids: Sally Taylor and Ben Taylor.

But even after their marriage came to an end in 1981—two years before their divorce was finalized—Simon remained a permanent fixture in the Vineyard and later bought the marital home from Taylor, renaming it Hidden Star Hill.

Today, the property is home to multiple structures, including a main house that spreads over 5,000 square feet, as well as a gazebo, multiple barns, a horse shed, and several other properties, like a second house where Simon’s son was living with his fiancée for several years, according to New England Living.

There is also a tennis court on the property and a swimming pool, which has been put to good use by the singer’s family over the years, with Facebook images revealing a charming glimpse inside the many gatherings Simon has hosted at her home.

And then there are the animals, which include several goats and donkeys, as well as miniature horses.

While Taylor originally purchased nearly 200 acres of land in the area, Simon’s compound now boasts around 25 acres—which she lovingly tends to year round, regularly sharing images of her gardens and her animals on her social media accounts.

“I just love it here,” she told New England Living of her home—and Martha’s Vineyard in general. “Part of it is because it’s where I came as a child and part of it is serendipity. When I met James, he had just bought this tract of land and started building on it, so I moved in with him.”

The singer admitted in the 2017 interview that she had considered moving to a smaller property, but joked that she simply couldn’t bear to let her compound go, not least because she was terrified about the thought of someone else tending to her gardens and her trees.

In June 2018, Simon’s children told The New York Times how much their mother loved the flowers that those gardens produce, particularly the peonies, which her son joked became her obsession every year.

“This time of year, my mom’s whole life is about peonies,” he said. “You can’t miss it, man. Her appreciation for them is contagious.”

However, perhaps the most emotionally significant aspect of the home is the creative freedom it has allowed Simon to enjoy—serving as the place where she brought her latest album to life, as well as the backdrop for her two memoirs, “Boys in the Trees,” which was released in 2015, and “Touched by the Sun,” which was published in 2019.

The house itself has evolved significantly since Taylor first built a home on the property, which Simon described in her 2015 book as a “cabin,” recalling the first time she laid eyes on the dwelling.

“Ahead of us I could see the outlines of what looked like a romantic music box of a house,” she wrote. “It was James’s cabin, silhouetted in the moonlight. The pitch of the roof was steep. The windows were high and narrow. Everything about the house was like James himself: tall, lean, modest, and beautiful.”

Despite the fact that Simon and Taylor had little to no relationship after their divorce, something that she has said has been very painful for her to come to terms with, she explained to The Vineyard Gazette in 2015 that his presence was still very much felt throughout the home.

“I did want to come to terms with the wonderful ghostlike memory of James, because I live with it in this house,” she said.

“I’m the one who lives in the house and I’m altogether happy about living here, but there’s a lot more of the presence of James Taylor in my life than I am in his, strictly because of locale.”