Angel Carter Conrad is all too familiar with grief, but she’s learned how to turn her pain into action after the deaths of her sister Leslie in 2012, twin brother Aaron in 2022 and sister Bobbie Jean just one year ago.
Conrad, 37, supports the non-profit the Kids Mental Health Foundation in the hopes that she’s able to equip other children with the skills they need to protect themselves and nurture their minds — something she and her siblings struggled with growing up.
“Within my grief, I have found a lot of peace and a lot of hope with working with the Kids Mental Health Foundation,” Conrad tells PEOPLE exclusively. “Volunteering my time, raising awareness, raising funds for this organization and just continuing the conversation about mental health and the stigma that surrounds it.”
(Top R-L) Singer Aaron Carter and Nick Carter, (Bottom R-L ) Bobbie Jean Carter, Leslie Carter and Angel Carter on September 29, 2006 in New York City.
Kristy Leibowitz/Getty
In her quest to end what she calls the “generational dysfunction” within her family, Conrad also shares that she’s educating herself on the disease that plagued her loved ones: addiction.
“A few years before Aaron passed away, he said to me something that really stuck with me, and he said, ‘Angel, you just don’t know enough about addiction.’ And it hit my heart, especially after he passed away because I don’t (know enough),” she admits. “The last couple of years, I’ve just been really trying to educate myself about this disease and how it affects people and how it causes things that they do that they may not mean to do.”
Learning about addiction while working to help improve children’s mental health is exemplified by how Conrad talks to her own five-year-old daughter Harper. While she’s careful of keeping the conversations digestible and age-appropriate for a kindergartener, Conrad stresses that “providing boundaries” for Harper remains of the utmost importance to her as a parent.
“That wasn’t done in my home growing up: providing a safe space for her discipline and allowing her to have her innocence,” says Conrad, who shares Harper with husband Corey Conrad. “I look back at Aaron’s life, and me and my sisters as well, and our innocence was taken away from us. Especially Aaron, being a child star and working like an adult in the entertainment industry. I think the most important thing is that my child is protected with her innocence, and she’s able to grow and learn and try new things and become the person that she wants to be one day.”
Conrad also says her grief is anything but “linear.” Some days are better than others, and with each anniversary that passes by to remind her of the losses she’s suffered, she chooses to honor her late siblings.
“Having so much loss in my life, I do know what to expect to a certain extent now, and I want to continue to honor my family. So in those moments on those anniversaries — Aaron and I just had a birthday, we just turned 37 — and I really just try to be in peace and in that moment as much as I can and just honor them by talking to them and allowing them to still be present in my life,” she says.
Bobbie Jean Carter, Nick Carter, Leslie Carter, Angel Carter, and Aaron Carter arrive at the Style Network Party At The Summer TCA Tour on July 11, 2006 in Pasadena, California.
Chad Buchanan/Getty
Conrad manages her grief by keeping the memory of her siblings alive in the family’s next generation, in everyone from Harper, who “knows who Uncle Aaron is and she knows Aunt Leslie and she knows her Aunt Bobbie Jean,” says Conrad, to her siblings’ children as well.
“With Prince, he lives locally, so he knows Harper, and we have play dates and he is so smart. I mean this kid is brilliant. He’s only three years old and he’s already reading and writing and he just blows my mind,” says Conrad of Aaron’s son.
She says she’s also involved in the lives of Leslie’s teenage daughter Alyssa and Bobbie Jean’s 9-year-old daughter Bella.
“I do have a relationship with all of my nieces and nephews. That’s really important (to me) because I want to show them that there is a life lesson to be taught here with the tragedies that have happened,” she says. “It is a choice to look at the good in any situation — because there’s always a good — and to focus on that and to nurture that. I want to teach these children that bad things can happen to you, but it’s how you handle it that matters.”
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Now, on the one year anniversary of Bobbie Jean’s death, Conrad is remembering her “mama bear” older sister as a “loving, funny” person.
“BJ didn’t ask for what happened to her and it wasn’t her fault and she didn’t deserve that,” says Conrad of her sister’s untimely death. “I want people to remember her as a human being who deserved to be loved.”
If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, please contact the SAMHSA helpline at 1-800-662-HELP.
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