OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN - NEWTON-JOHN'S ALBUM HELPED OVERCOME LOSS OF PARTNER

Actress/singer OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN's new album Grace and Gratitude has helped her come to terms with the loss of her boyfriend. The Grease star's partner of nine years, Patrick MCDermott, disappeared while on a fishing trip off the coast of California in 2005 and Newton-John is adamant she would never have recovered from the trauma without getting back into the recording studio. She says, "It helped me greatly because I found that when I write music - when you write lyrics, like keeping a diary, writing poetry or a song - you take yourself out of your emotional body into more of an analytical body and it takes your mind out of grief. "It kind of takes you into the healing and when I was recording the songs, it was a great cathartic kind of thing, because it was where I needed to be."