Gisele Bündchen remembers the day her then-seven-year-old daughter broke her arm after falling off a horse as “one of the worst” days of her life.
“She had a fall, and she broke her arm,” the former Victoria’s Secret model, 43, told People magazine. “I was there watching that whole thing in slow motion, and it was one of the worst days of my life.”
She added, “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.”
Despite her own fears, she said she tried to calm Vivian, now 10, whom she shares with ex-husband Tom Brady, down.
GISELE BUNDCHEN RECALLS CONTEMPLATING SUICIDAL THOUGHTS DURING PEAK OF FAME
“‘Let’s just come with Mommy,'” Bündchen said she told her daughter. “‘We’re going to put a thing around.’ 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.'”
Bündchen said that Vivian had a pin temporarily placed in her arm and was forced to stop riding for a year.
“It was intense,” the supermodel explained. “She had to have the cast, and she had to do another surgery to remove the pin.”
She continued, “You would think after going through all of that at seven years old, that you wouldn’t want to do it anymore. After a year, after the pin was removed, we started going to ride horses again. Just the western kind. It was just easy on the beach.”
Just a few months after that, Bündchen said Vivian was back “running on the beach (on her horse). I’m like, ‘Hold on!’ And then after that, she was like, ‘Mom, I want to go back jumping again.’ And I’m like, ‘Okay.’ She overcame that fear that was really real for her.”
“And then, she feels like she’s okay, I’m okay. And now, she’s back at it, and she’s loving it,” she added.
Bündchen and the former NFL quarterback divorced last year after 13 years of marriage. The former couple also share son Benjamin, 13. Brady has a son, Jack, with ex Bridget Moynahan.
The 43-year-old has also spoken about how difficult her divorce has been.
“I mean, it’s not what I dreamed of and what I hoped for,” she told “CBS News Sunday Morning” in September. “My parents have been married for 50 years, and I really wanted that to happen. But I think you have to accept, you know, sometimes that the way you are in your 20s, it’s sometimes you grow together, sometimes you grow apart. I mean, he’s the father of my kids, you know? So, I always wish him the best, and I’m so grateful that he gave me wonderful children.”