Ivanka Trump got candid about dealing with several major family tragedies in recent years and the impact it had on her mental health.
The mother of three sat down on The Diary of a CEO podcast, and shared that she turned to therapy in 2020 to help her adjust to setbacks like the end of her time in Washington, D.C. and her husband Jared Kushner’s cancer battle.
She told the host that she sought support after “some of the challenges around Jared’s health. I had just left Washington. Our life was in flux. Jared was diagnosed with thyroid cancer for a second time, and then my mother passed.”
Jared, whom she married in 2009, was first diagnosed with the disease during Donald Trump’s first term in the White House, and had surgery to remove a tumor in his throat, as he revealed in his memoir.
Jared underwent a second surgery on his thyroid in 2022, in the same year that Ivanka’s mother and Donald’s first wife, Ivana Trump, passed away aged 73. Ivana had fallen down the stairs of her NYC townhouse, leaving her kids Donald Jr., Eric and Ivanka heartbroken.
“My mother taught me a lot about bringing intention to what you do,” the former model said on the podcast as tears sprang to her eyes. “She lived a good life. She was very joyful.” Ivanka then requested a tissue from an aide and dabbed away her tears before continuing.
© Getty Images for REFORM Alliance“Losing a parent. It hits differently, you know, especially unexpectedly, especially sort of post-COVID, which kind of robbed so many of us of so many years,” she explained. Ivanka also expressed her grief over the fact that her three kids, Arabella, Joseph and Theodore, would never get the chance to know their grandmother, as they were young when she died.
Learn more about Ivanka’s mini-me daughter Arabella below…
Instead, Ivana’s mother, Marie Zelníčková, is helping to raise the children and lives with the family in Florida. “It’s a blessing to have her in our home and living with us. Her telling her stories and stories of my mother, who they sadly didn’t get to know.”
Ivanka also shared insight into her emotions on the day that her father was shot at during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania in July 2024. The 44-year-old was at the Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey with her children when they witnessed the incident live on TV.
© WireImage“There was a lot of commotion. The televisions were on, so I saw it almost immediately,” she recalled. “It was before he had stood back up that I had seen what was transpiring, and two of my children were there [with me]. My first reaction was to turn them away. It was incredibly difficult.”
© AFP via Getty ImagesIvanka added that she knew he would be okay, as it “wasn’t his time” to go. “I was horrified and scared and protective of my children, but I also didn’t believe the worst possible outcome had transpired. And thank God it hadn’t.”
“The fact that he’s with us today, that he didn’t die, that my father’s alive. That is an extraordinary blessing for me as his daughter,” she shared. “In life, you only have a choice only in how you respond, and I choose to see the positive outcome that transpired and dwell there.”
Read the full article here
