Madonna is approaching the first anniversary of the death of her younger brother, Christopher Ciccone, who died this past October at the age of 63. At times, the singer’s relationship with her sibling was tumultuous, leading to periods during which they rarely spoke. During her first podcast appearance, on Jay Shetty’s On Purpose, Madonna details a spiritual encounter she had while in a medically-induced coma (during her four-day hospitalization in the ICU in June 2023 for a serious bacterial infection) that led to her reconnecting with Ciccone.
“I was almost there on the other side and I had a conscious moment and my mother appeared to me and she said, ‘Do you want to come with me?’ And I said, ‘No,’” Madonna said. “My assistant was in the room with me, but I was still unconscious, but she heard me say, ‘No.’ And then when I did eventually wake up, I realized that the ‘No’ was about me needing to forgive and make good with people that I still held grudges against.”
Soon after, Madonna wrote a song about her brother and another about forgiveness. The unreleased tracks, titled “Fragile” and “Forgive Yourself,” center around the idea of accountability and responsibility. “We have to forgive others but we also have to forgive ourselves and stop beating up on ourselves about things, choices we’ve made in the past that haven’t worked out for ourselves or other people,” she said.
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For a while, Madonna added, she pushed off forgiving with Ciccone because she assumed she’d have more time to do so. “Your ego dances around it like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ll get to it. I’ll get to calling him up or talking to him or being his friend or helping him,’” she said. “But eventually I did. And, I know I’m being mysterious, if someone you love deeply betrays you and does something that shows that they have no consciousness in that moment that they made that choice to do that, it’s a bitter pill for me to swallow.”
She continued, “For my brother, I didn’t speak to him for years, years, and years. It was him being ill and reaching out to me and saying, ‘I need your help,’ and me having that moment like, ‘Am I going to help my enemy?’ That’s how it felt. And I just did. I felt so relieved. It was such a load off my back, such a weight that was removed, baggage that I could put down to finally be able to be in a room with him and holding his hand — even if he was dying — and saying, ‘I love you and I forgive you.’”
