Trinny Woodall says her ex-husband’s suicide was hard to accept because he was ‘obsessed’ with the welfare of his children and she can’t understand why he thought they would be better off without him
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Trinny Woodall has opened up about her ex-husband’s suicide, saying it was hard to understand how someone so hyper-obsessed with their children’s welfare convinced himself they were better off without him.
Beauty entrepreneur and former TV presenter Trinny said she didn’t get to grieve for Johnny Elichaoff until six months ago – eight years after his death – when their daughter Lyla left home, leaving her alone.
Johnny, who also had a son Zak from a previous relationship, took his life in 2014 aged 55.
Although he was known to have suffered a series of failed oil investments before his death, Trinny said he was going through such turmoil that he’d convinced himself his children were better off without him – despite his hypervigilance over their welfare.
The former What Not To Wear presenter, 59, whose Trinny London business is valued at £180 million, told Monday’s Diary of a CEO podcast: ‘Johnny had hypervigilance around his children because he had been in the Israeli army and he was a paramedic.
Emotional: Trinny Woodall has opened up about her ex-husband’s suicide, saying it was hard to understand how someone so obsessed with their children’s welfare would end their life
Devastating: Trinny said she didn’t get to grieve for Johnny Elichaoff (pictured) until six months ago – eight years after his death – when their daughter Lyla left home
‘And he had from it post-traumatic stress disorder which wasn’t diagnosed until about 20 years later.
‘But one of the things also is hypervigilance around his children, so he was always so worried for their welfare.
‘So you kind of have this thing of where do you get to in your brain, when you are so worried about your children, that you can convince yourself that the best thing for your children, who you love profoundly, is that you’re not in their life anymore?
‘And that is something that is so important that we can help people who get to that situation – that they don’t get to that final part of that situation.
‘It’s understanding what to recognise, and it’s very hard to recognise. I didn’t recognise. There were lots of details of it which could have really upset me, of things that were done wrong. But you kind of have to let go.
‘You need to work through these stages and not get stuck in something which eats you up.’
She added: ‘Every person who has had somebody commit suicide will at some stage say “was there anything I could have done to stop it?”‘
Johnny’s death came after the couple had divorced, but Trinny said they remained so close that they would still speak every day until he died – but it took her eight years to grieve.
Hard to process: Trinny said he was going through such turmoil that he’d convinced himself his children were better off without him – despite his hypervigilance over their welfare
Tragic: Johnny, who also had a son Zak from a previous relationship, took his life in 2014 aged 55
She said: ‘We spoke every day on the phone. It took me a long time to grieve because he left a mess when he died which I had to kind of deal with.
‘So it preoccupies you to not then actually just think about what you miss in somebody. You’re focused on what you’ve got to do, you go on to auto-pilot.
‘Probably oddly I moved in March and that was the first time I remember Lyla went away, and it was the first time in 35 years I’d been on my own in the house. And I grieved for Johnny, all those years later.’
She added: ‘I suppose you need space. He died, there was a mess, then starting the business, I was living in a house I couldn’t afford to live in, I had to sell it for lots of reasons, one of them for that reason.
‘There were so many sort of fires I was dealing with – trying to guide Lyla to be OK. So there were a lot of years of that.
Moving: Trinny was close to tears as she discussed her former husband’s death on YouTube podcast Diary of a CEO
‘And then another life change of just deciding I want to live on my own then brought up in a way to be able to just feel something that I hadn’t really let myself feel.
‘Sometimes in life we know we’re not in that part of that strong enough to feel that feeling and move forward, and we have to be in the right situation and give ourselves that breathing space to be able to feel the fullness of that feeling without judgement or guilt of remorse.’
She said what she felt then was “there was nothing better in anyone else than the bestness of Johnny – and I missed it”.
‘This is eight years later, but things take time,’ she added.
Johnny, who had battled an addiction to painkillers for 20 years, died at the Whiteley’s shopping centre in Bayswater, west London, in November 2014.
The drummer turned businessman had been talked down from the same spot 11 days previously and was sectioned briefly.
But he returned to the shopping centre twice more in the space of five days before finally killing himself the next day.
Johnny married TV presenter Trinny in 1999 in London’s Knightsbridge and the couple had a child Lyla, now 19, before they divorced in 2009, but remained on good terms.
An inquest into his death was conducted at Westminster Coroner’s Court in November 2015, during which Trinny’s brother Mark Woodall read a statement from the presenter.
She wrote: ‘Johnny Elichaoff was a much loved brother, father and husband and he will be sorely missed by all who knew him.
‘Even in his darkest moments he was always there for those who needed him as a parent, brother, son and spouse with unconditional love and support.
‘As a person he had the best sense of humour, he was unconditionally kind and never spoke ill of other people.
‘He was heartfelt with his advice and had the ability to always make people feel better once they had confided in him
‘Everyone who met him had a story to tell about and not a day goes by his family don’t think of him and the utter tragedy of his passing.’
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