Madonna’s Visit with Late Mom During Coma Led to Reconciliation with Brother

Madonna is reflecting on her relationship with her late brother.

During an interview on the On Purpose with Jay Shetty podcast, the “Vogue” singer, 67, opened up about a visit with her late mother “on the other side” while she was hospitalized in a medically induced coma for a “serious bacterial infection” in June 2023.

When speaking with host Shetty, 38, on the Sept. 29 episode about the “ability to forgive,” Madonna mentioned how she forgave her late brother Christopher Ciccone after the otherworldly interaction.

“When things happen to you and there’s not a tangible enemy that you can put your finger on, what are you going to do? You have to lean into radical acceptance,” Madonna, whose full name is Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone, began.

However, the singer noted that she initially thought she would “never forgive” those involved in events from her past.

“Now I just don’t want to have those feelings anymore ’cause they’re really … it’s a prison,” Madonna explained. “And it’s poison to not be able to forgive and to live in a state of holding a grudge.”

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Madonna said that “for a really long time,” her brother Christopher, who died in October 2024 after being diagnosed with cancer, was one of the toughest for her to forgive.

“The hardest ones are the people that you feel like you’re the closest to,” she explained. “They’re your greatest ally and they turn on you.”

She added: “The people that hurt you the most are the people that you love the most.”

Madonna said that she hadn’t spoken to her brother for years after a falling out, and when he fell ill, he reached out to her. She felt “relieved” having been at Christopher’s side before his death, calling it “a load off my back.”

“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.’ That was really important.”

She then mentioned how a couple of years ago, she had been visited by her mother, Madonna Louise Ciccone, who died in 1963 at 30.

“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,’ ” the “Hung Up” singer said, recalling her 2023 hospitalization and coma.

“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.” Madonna added that she wrote the upcoming

song “Fragile” about her brother.

Throughout the podcast appearance, Madonna spoke about being hospitalized days before she was set to kick off her Celebration World Tour.

“I was rehearsing for my tour, and I got a bacterial infection,” she recalled. “One minute I was alive and dancing around and the next minute I was in the ICU unit of a hospital and I woke up from being unconscious for four days.”