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Madonna reveals in an interview with Jay Shetty how her own near-death experience led to a moment of forgiveness as her brother was dying.
Madonna gave some very rare insight into her complicated relationship with her brother Christopher Ciccone -- and how she was able to forgive him before his death, after years of estrangement.
The Queen of Pop made an appearance on Jay Shetty's On Purpose podcast, where she and the host talked about spirituality, her faith in Kabbalah, finding happiness and forgiveness in a conversation that spanned more than two hours.
During their candid chat, Madonna opened up about her public feud with her brother, who served as the art director for her Blonde Ambition Tour and tour director for The Girlie Show in the early '90s. He later wrote a tell-all memoir titled Life With My Sister Madonna, which drove a wedge between them. Though he claimed in 2012 the two had gotten back on speaking terms, she revealed while speaking with Shetty that they had years of estrangement before he died of cancer at 63 in 2024.
"Holding a grudge, hating someone or wanting them to suffer ... it's a kind of poison, a kind of cancer. That's why it's important to find a way to forgive people who you perceive as your biggest enemies," she said in the podcast. "For a really long time, it was my brother, who died recently."
"I think the hardest ones are the people you feel like you're the closest to, they're your greatest ally and they turn on you. The people who hurt you the most are the people you love the most," she continued, adding that having "vengeful thoughts" about others only weighs you down.
"So having to forgive my brother, knowing I had to forgive my brother, your ego dances around it. Like, I'll get to it, I'll get to calling him up or talking to him or being his friend or helping him. Eventually I did," she continued, acknowledging that she was "being mysterious" with some of her comments, not wanting to get totally specific about the situation.
"But if someone you love deeply betrays you and does something that shows they have no consciousness in the moment they made that choice to do that, it's a bitter pill for me to swallow," said Madonna. "For my brother, I didn't speak to him for three years. Years and years. And it was him being ill and reaching out to me and saying, 'I need your help,' that means having that moment, like, 'Am I gonna help my enemy?'"
"And I just did," she shared, adding that the experience left her feeling "so relieved."
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View Story"It was such a load off my back, such a weight that was removed, baggage that was put down to finally be able to be in a room with him and holding his hand, even if he was dying, saying, 'I love you and I forgive you,'" she explained. "That was really important."
She added that her own near-death experience in 2023 -- when she was hospitalized with a bacterial infection and was in a coma for four days -- also sparked her feelings of forgiveness.
"That was another thing I realized, when I woke up in the hospital, forgiveness. That word came to my mind. I have to forgive people," she told Shetty. "Because I was there, I was almost there on the other side. 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."
Claiming her assistant actually heard her say "No," while unconscious, Madonna said she later realized "that the 'no' was about me needing to forgive and make good with people that I still held grudges against."
She added that she has since wrote a song about her late brother for her upcoming album, a track titled, "Fragile."
The new album, due out next year, sees her reunite with DJ Stuart Price, with whom she previously collaborated for Confessions on a Dance Floor.
