Ariana Grande FaceTimes With Estranged Dad on Christmas Day

Ariana Grande had a cathartic Christmas conversation with her father, Edward Butera on FaceTime to celebrate the holiday.

Grande revealed the familial development on Tuesday on her Instagram Story. The pop singer’s feed was relatively sparse, consisting of a dog-walking video, an old photograph and a picture of her chat with her dad. Grande has made no secret of her troubles with her father, but this year it looks like they came together.

Grande did not add any details on the chat, but it looked like a cheerful one. Grande’s father smiled on one phone screen as she snapped a picture of her living room with another. In the past, she has let slip a few details about their fraught relationship, most recently in her hit song “Thank U, Next.”

“One day I’ll walk down the aisle / Holding hands with my mama,” she sang. “I’ll be thanking my dad / ’cause she grew from the drama.”

Grande has offered specifics on that drama only a few times. In 2014, she gave an interview with Seventeen where she said that the “toughest thing” she had ever had to deal with was “falling out of touch with my dad.”

“It’s private, but it happened last year,” she said at the time. “It took me so long to be okay with it. The thing that got me there was embracing the fact that that I am made up of half my dad, and a lot of my traits come from him.”

“So much of me comes from my father, and for so long, I didn’t like that about myself,” Grande went on. “I had to accept that it’s okay not to get along with somebody and still love them.”

Whatever the details of their estrangement, Grande seems to be working toward a resolution. Back in June of 2017, she posted a photo of her dad and her infant self.

“Happy Father’s Day I love you,” she wrote in the caption.

Meanwhile, this year has Grande feeling very nostalgic for her mother. The singer posted an old video of herself singing with Joan Grande on Twitter last week. A young Grande smiled up at her mom and tried to mimic her pitch as she belted out “Tell Him” by Celine Dion and Barbra Streisand.

“Am I Celine or Barbra?” Joan asked before launching into her part. She enjoyed the throwback as well, responding to her daughter’s post.

“Every mother’s question to their 4 year old daughter, ‘am I Celine or Barbra?’” she quipped. “We are cute!”

Grande is still planning a major tour in 2019, and with the holidays behind her, the preparations likely begin in earnest now.