The supermodel opens up to ET about her personal tragedy, and how she wants to help others.
Cindy Crawford is using her star power to shed light on a good cause.
ET's Kevin Frazier exclusively spoke with Crawford and Kiley and Sean Hanish of Return to Zero, at the foundation's fundraiser in Los Angeles on Thursday. The organization, which aims to help people cope with pregnancy and infant loss, was created after the Hanishs' own personal experience with stillbirth. At Thursday's event, Crawford opened up to ET about her special connection to the cause.
"I lost a brother when I was 10 years old, which, you know, we've talked about before," Crawford shared of her late brother, Jeffrey, who died of leukemia at age three. "Even then, as a 10 year old, I saw that people don't know how to talk to you about loss right."
"I went back to school, and some kids said nothing. Some kids made jokes, and it was awkward. Grief is awkward. We are not taught how to grieve, and one of the incredibly powerful things that these guys did with their loss is open a conversation for other families who've suffered similar loss," she said of Kiley and Sean. "So many people have a miscarriage or stillborn birth or lose a child very quickly after it's born, and I think we don't know how to take care of parents."
The absence of a real dialogue on the subject inspired Sean to make a film, Return to Zero, inspired by his and Kiley's experience. Kiley gave birth to their first child in 2005 when she was 35 weeks pregnant, though doctors noticed the baby didn't have a heartbeat. The film premiered on Lifetime in 2014, starring Minnie Driver and Paul Adelstein.
"The organization started with the film Return to Zero, which Sean wrote and directed, and from that, I was inspired to create women's retreats for brave moms who have been through a pregnancy or infant loss," Kiley explained. "And then along the way, I realized such a big part of this was education and training for health providers because they are not given this type of training in their education, but it happens so often and they need it."
"I'm just so proud of my friends, who are using their loss to really help others on this road towards healing," Crawford added. "You know, there is no one way, no right way, but it's just the conversation that helps."
Kiley and Sean are now parents to two healthy children -- just like Crawford, who shares 19-year-old son Presley and 17-year-old daughter Kaia with husband Rande Gerber. The supermodel recently shared never-before-seen family photos in a spread for InStyle.
"I've always done photo albums, and I glue them in, so the way for me to show the pictures was I had to get out the whole big album... [For InStyle], I had veto power, because those pictures were meant for family consumption, not for public consumption," she revealed. "So once they kind of did their selects, I said to the kids, 'Are you OK with this?' Because some of the silly ones of the kids when they were little, they may or may not want out there for the world."
"But for the most part, I think most mothers or parents, I love looking back at just our life and those great memories of when the kids were little, but also of how far we've come," Crawford said. "I love photo albums."
See more on the model and her family in the video below.
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