Vanessa Bryant still struggling with grief as anniversary of losing Kobe and Gianna approaches
Vanessa Bryant says she’s still battling crippling grief as the first anniversary of the day she lost husband Kobe Bryant and their daughter Gianna in a horrific helicopter crash approaches.
“Let me be real — grief is a messed up cluster of emotions. One day you’re in the moment laughing and the next day you don’t feel like being alive,” she said in a brutally honest post on her Instagram stories Friday.
“I want to say this for people struggling with grief and heartbreaking loss,” she continued. “Find your reason to live. I know it’s hard. I look at my daughter and I try to push through that feeling for them.”
She said “death is guaranteed” but finding the strength to continue “living the rest of the day isn’t.”
“Find your reason,” she said.
The widow of the Lakers legend shared the emotional post just days before the one-year death anniversary coming up Jan. 26.
It was on that day last year that Kobe, 41, Gianna, 13, and seven other people died when the helicopter carrying the group to a youth basketball tournament crashed in Calabasas, Calif., killing everyone aboard.
The pilot encountered dense fog during the trip to Thousand Oaks and slammed into a hillside at high speed, investigators said.
Two of the Giana’s teammates died in the wreckage along with their parents, a team coach and the pilot.
Vanessa previously opened up about her grief in an Instagram post two weeks after the tragedy.
“I’ve been reluctant to put my feelings into words. My brain refuses to accept that both Kobe and Gigi are gone. I can’t process both at the same time,” she wrote in a post that garnered more than a million views in a matter of minutes.
“It’s like I’m trying to process Kobe being gone but my body refuses to accept my Gigi will never come back to me. It feels wrong,” she shared.
