Jennifer Siebel Newsom, a documentary filmmaker and the wife of California Governor Gavin Newsom, has spoken of her grief at a childhood golf cart accident that killed her sister.
Ms Siebel Newsom opened up about the 1981 tragedy in which her sister, Stacia, died as the sisters and other children played with the carts while on vacation in Hawaii.
In an interview with The Los Angeles Times about how trauma has shaped her life, she said that as a seven-year-old she reversed one of the carts and struck her older sister who she had not seen hiding behind it.
Ms Siebel Newsom, who wrapped her arms around herself as she talked about the tragedy to the newspaper, explained that her sister’s death had forced her to push herself to make up for the devastating loss.
“I felt the pressure to be perfect, to make my parents forget, by being two daughters instead of one,” the 48-year-old admitted.
“I’m sure there was survivor’s guilt, and I’m sure, in my subconscious, it’s like I have to make up for that loss.
“And I have to do something to improve other people’s lives or have an impact, double my own, which is a little crazy. I don’t use the word ‘crazy.’ But you know, it’s aspirational.
“I realised that I’m really hard on myself. I realised that you can’t blame a six- [or] seven-year-old. You can’t ask them to understand things.”
Ms Siebel Newsom played soccer at Stanford University, where she received her MBA, and also represented the US under-23 national team.
She also told the newspaper about her “horrific experience” of testifying against disgraced Hollywood executive Harvey Weinstein.
She told a court that Weinstein had sexually assaulted her during a 2005 meeting at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills, with a jury unable to reach a verdict on her charge.
“I thought if I went and spoke my truth that — I didn’t realise how much sexism and misogyny still exists in our culture,” she said. “I was shocked by that. I was shocked. I really was. I mean, shame on me.”
During the trial, Mark Werksman, a defence attorney for Weinstein, described the state’s first lady and former actress as “just another bimbo who slept with Harvey Weinstein to get ahead in Hollywood.”
