Gisele Bündchen Shares That Daughter Vivian Suffered 'Intense' Injury While Horseback Riding
Gisele Bündchen and daughter Vivian
Gisele Bündchen is opening up about what she calls "one of the worst days of [her] life," when her youngest child, daughter Vivian, now 10, fell off of her horse.
The incident happened when the girl was just seven years old, resulting in a broken arm and a period of rest and recovery, but, as they say, she quickly got back on the horse.
"She had a fall and she broke her arm," the model, 43, recently told People while talking about the girl's desire to start performing even higher jumps on the animal.
"When she got up from the horse the first time she hurt herself, her arm was bent. And she was like, 'Mom!' And I'm like, 'Oh my God.' Imagine," she recalled. She described watching the "whole thing in slow motion," looking back on the "crazy" day that happened at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, which resulted in surgery to have a pin placed in her arm. "It was intense. And then she just was like...for six months, she had to have the cast and she had to do another surgery to remove the pin."
She assumed that Vivian would no longer be interested in horseback riding after the fact, but after about a year, they started taking easy beach rides. "When we went to Costa Rica, we were just riding easy. And then she, little by little, at first she was just riding with me on the saddle, and then she started riding alone a little bit, slower."
Within a few months, the girl was flying down the beach on her horse. "I'm like, 'Hold on!'" she recalled. Not long after, Vivian was ready to try jumping again. "She overcame that fear that was really real for her."
But it was perhaps even more real for her mother. "Sometimes I feel like it's us who put our fears, because I was so afraid," she admitted. "Because I had that, watching her go through all of that." She added, "But I feel that, at the end of the day, if we can show them confidence and be like, 'It's okay, let's go ride.' And then, she feels like she's okay, I'm okay."
The mother of two shares Vivian and son Benjamin, 13, with her ex-husband, Patriots star Tom Brady, 46.
Next: Gisele Bündchen Opens Up About Growing 'Apart' From Ex-Husband Tom Brady
