The singer Mariah Carey has made the devastating announcement that both her mother Patricia and her sister Alison died on the same day last weekend.

Mariah Loses Her Mother And Her Sister

“My heart is broken that I’ve lost my mother this past weekend,” Mariah, 55, told People Magazine. “Sadly, in a tragic turn of events, my sister lost her life on the same day.”

“I feel blessed that I was able to spend the last week with my mom before she passed,” she continued. “I appreciate everyone’s love and support and respect for my privacy during this impossible time.”

No further details about the deaths of Patricia and Alison have been revealed at this time.

Mariah’s Complicated Relationship With Her Mother

Patricia was a Juilliard-trained opera singer and vocal coach. After marrying Alfred Roy Carey, they welcomed daughters Alison and Mariah and a son named Morgan. The couple divorced when Mariah was only three years old.

Though Mariah inherited her incredible vocal abilities from her mother, their relationship was a complicated one at times.

“Like many aspects of my life, my journey with my mother has been full of contradictions and competing realities. It’s never been only black-and-white — it’s been a whole rainbow of emotions,” Mariah wrote in her 2020 memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey.

“Our relationship is a prickly rope of pride, pain, shame, gratitude, jealousy, admiration and disappointment,” she continued. “A complicated love tethers my heart to my mother’s.”

Despite these complications, Mariah and Patricia always maintained a relationship. Mariah even dedicated her memoir to her mother.

“And to Pat, my mother, who, through it all, I do believe actually did the best she could,” she wrote. “I will love you the best I can, always.”

Check out Mariah and Patricia performing together back in 2010 below.

Mariah’s Falling Out With Her Sister

Mariah’s relationship with Alison, however, was even more complex. Alison is known to have struggled with drug addiction for many years. In her memoir, Mariah explained why she eventually had to cut both Alison and Morgan, now 64, out of her life.

“For my sanity and peace of mind, my therapist encouraged me to literally rename and reframe my family … Morgan my ex-brother and Alison my ex-sister … I had to stop expecting them to one day miraculously become the … big brother and big sister I fantasized about,” she wrote.

“I had to stop making myself available to be hurt by them,” Mariah added. “It has been helpful. I have no doubt it is emotionally and physically safer for me not to have any contact with my ex-brother and ex-sister.”

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Mariah later told Oprah Winfrey in 2020 that Alison was “troubled and traumatized.”

“We don’t even really know each other, and that’s the thing. We didn’t grow up together, but we did. Like, they were on their journeys, by the time I got into the world, they had already been damaged, in my opinion,” she said. “But again, I wasn’t there. I was dropped into this world and I literally felt like an outsider amongst my own family.”

Full Story: Mariah Carey: My Sister Tried To Pimp Me Out When I Was 12 Years Old

Alison Fired Back

Enraged by how she was portrayed in Mariah’s memoir, Alison filed a $1.25 million lawsuit against the Grammy-winning singer in 2021. In legal documents, she claimed that Mariah “used her status as a public figure to attack her penniless sister, generating sensational headlines describing her lurid claims to promote sales of her book.”

Alison denied the “cruel and outrageous allegations” that Mariah made in the book, saying that she was left “devastated” by them. She wanted the $1.25 million sum as “compensation for the infliction of immense emotional distress caused by defendant’s heartless, vicious, vindictive, despicable and totally unnecessary public humiliation.”

It’s unclear how that legal battle turned out for her.

Despite Mariah’s complicated relationships with her mother and sister, losing them on the same day is still an incredibly tragic experience. Please join us in saying a prayer for Mariah during this difficult time.

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