Cindy Crawford says she experienced “survivor’s guilt” following the death of her brother Jeffrey when she was just eight.
Crawford, 58, talked about the family’s devastating loss on the podcast Kelly Corrigan Wonders co-hosted by fellow supermodel Christy Turlington Burns.
“I was eight, my older sister would have been 10, my younger sister would have been four and Jeff was like two, turning three when he got diagnosed [with leukemia] and then he was sick for two years.”
Listen to the audio above.
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Crawford recalled her mother driving to and from the hospital for her brother’s treatment while she and her sisters were cared for by extended family.
“We knew he was sick but we didn’t really know what was going on,” she said. “I think when he died obviously that was devastating for the whole family.”
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She said while her mother reached out for support during her grief, her father was left to return to work three days later to pay bills and she and her sisters dealt with their grief the best they knew how to as children.
Although Crawford admits to having felt survivor’s guilt having known how much her father in particular wanted a son.
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“There’s like that survivor’s guilt of the other kids and especially because we knew that my dad really wanted a boy and we felt like, ‘Well, it should have been one of us.'”
Crawford said for years she and her sisters felt this guilt and it wasn’t until the supermodel began therapy during the pandemic that she learned she needed to ask her mother to say that while she was sad to have lost her son, she was happy to have her daughters.
“Just to sort of close the loop on that feeling,” Crawford explained.
She said for her and her sisters the words “resonated.”
Crawford said the experience of losing her brother has helped her support both her children who have each lost friends from “car accidents and fentanyl” to have the words to express their grief.
“I remember when I went back to school after my brother died, not one person said one thing to me, no kidding, except for one kid who was like, ‘I saw in the paper your brother’s dead. Is that true?” she recalled.
“I was like, ‘Whoa.’ It was so in your face, but he didn’t know what to say. We were in third grade.”
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