As Madonna nears the first anniversary of her brother Christopher Ciccone’s death, the pop icon is opening up about how a life-threatening illness brought her family back together after years of estrangement. Ciccone, who passed away in October 2023 at age 63, had a complicated and at times distant relationship with his sister. But according to Madonna, a brush with mortality gave her the clarity she needed to reconnect with him before it was too late.

Speaking on her first-ever podcast appearance on On Purpose with Jay Shetty, Madonna recounted the spiritual experience she had while in a medically induced coma during a June 2023 hospitalization for a severe bacterial infection. She spent four days in the ICU, a period she now describes as transformative.

“I was almost there on the other side,” she told Shetty, explaining that in her unconscious state she envisioned her late mother. “My mother appeared to me and she said, ‘Do you want to come with me?’ And I said, ‘No.’”

Although she was not awake, Madonna said her assistant, who was present in the hospital room, heard her whisper the word “No” aloud. That single word, she later realized, carried profound meaning. “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,” she explained.

One of those unresolved relationships was with her younger brother Christopher. Over the years, their bond had deteriorated into long stretches of silence. Ciccone, a dancer and interior designer who once worked with Madonna early in her career, had later published a memoir that cast their relationship in an unflattering light. The fallout was lasting.

In the podcast, Madonna acknowledged how difficult forgiveness can be, particularly when trust has been broken. “If someone you love deeply betrays you and does something that shows they have no consciousness in that moment, it’s a bitter pill to swallow,” she said. “For my brother, I didn’t speak to him for years, years, and years.”

But Ciccone’s declining health eventually brought the siblings back into contact. He reached out to her for help, and she was forced to confront the choice of whether to respond. “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,” she said.

Madonna chose to put aside years of resentment and answer the call. “I just did. I felt so relieved,” she reflected. “It was such a load off my back, such a weight that was removed, baggage that I could put down.” The singer said she was grateful to be able to sit with Ciccone in his final days, holding his hand and telling him, “I love you and I forgive you.”

The experience not only reshaped her personal life but also her creative output. In the months following her hospitalization, Madonna wrote two songs inspired by the themes of forgiveness and accountability. Titled Fragile and Forgive Yourself, the tracks remain unreleased but, according to her, are deeply tied to the lessons she took from her ordeal. “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,” she said.

Madonna admitted that for too long she postponed reconciliation, convinced there would always be more time. “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 her illness shattered that illusion.

Now, nearly a year after her brother’s passing, Madonna describes her decision to reconcile with him as one of the most healing moments of her life. Out of a near-death experience came a chance for closure, forgiveness, and a final expression of love.