It has been about five months since Gisele Bündchen and Tom Brady finalized their divorce following 13 years of marriage, and still, the emotions from the split are undeniably raw for the model.
"It's like a death and a rebirth," she said in a new interview with Vanity Fair, explaining that she has been mourning "the death of my dream."
"It's tough because you imagine your life was going to be a certain way, and you did everything you could, you know?" she continued, her voice breaking. "I believed in fairy tales when I was a kid. I think it's beautiful to believe in that. I mean, I'm so grateful I did."
She added, "You give everything you got to achieve your dream. You give a hundred percent of yourself, and it's heartbreaking when it doesn't end up the way you hoped for, and worked for, but you can only do your part."
Bündchen and Brady, who share children Benjamin, 13, and Vivian, 10, announced their separation in October 2022. At the time, reports claimed it was Brady's refusal to retire from the NFL despite Bündchen's pleas that caused the couple to break it off. But that is not true, the supermodel said, calling the allegations "very hurtful" and "the craziest thing I've ever heard."
"Listen, I have always cheered for him, and I would continue forever," Bündchen said. "If there's one person I want to be the happiest in the world, it's him, believe me. I want him to achieve and to conquer. I want all his dreams to come true. That's what I want, really, from the bottom of my heart."
In reality, Bündchen said, Brady's busy football career (and the fact that he did not spend as much time at home as she maybe would have liked) "is one piece of a much bigger puzzle."
The reason they decided to divorce, she said, is simply "sometimes you grow together; sometimes you grow apart."
"When I was 26 years old and he was 29 years old, we met, we wanted a family, we wanted things together. As time goes by, we realize that we just wanted different things, and now we have a choice to make. That doesn't mean you don't love the person. It just means that in order for you to be authentic and truly live the life that you want to live, you have to have somebody who can meet you in the middle, right? It's a dance. It's a balance," Bündchen said.
Now that Brady has officially retired from football, Bündchen has openly wished him the best. She, meanwhile, has returned to modeling and has been spending as much time as possible in Costa Rica—her happy place—with her kids. She will always have love for Brady, she said, but they are now on different paths, and that's okay.
"When you love someone, you don't put them in a jail and say, 'You have to live this life.' You set them free to be who they are, and if you want to fly the same direction, then that's amazing," she said.
Their modern family will now be mostly based in Miami, where both Brady and Bündchen have homes, and where the model can easily fly from to Brazil (where her family lives).
"We're not playing against each other," Bündchen said of her and Brady. "We are a team, and that's beautiful. I look back and I have no regrets. I loved every bit of it."
Rosa Sanchez is the senior news editor at Harper's Bazaar, working on news as it relates to entertainment, fashion, and culture. Previously, she was a news editor at ABC News and, prior to that, a managing editor of celebrity news at American Media. She has also written features for Rolling Stone, Teen Vogue, Forbes, and The Hollywood Reporter, among other outlets.
