Former Bachelorette Clare Crawley is opening up about her health journey.
“Last December, I literally almost died. I had lost 20 lbs. I did not have that weight to lose and I was super sick and just, frankly, wanted to die,” Crawley, 45, said on the Tuesday, October 27, episode of the “She’s All Bach” podcast. “I was feeling so horrible and just felt like I couldn’t go on how life was for me health wise.”
She continued, “It was years of going through this that I was like, ‘I don’t know how much longer I can do this.’ So much pain. But I know what it feels like to be at low, low, with my health and emotionally because I had just lost my mom at the time, too.”
In 2025, Crawley shared her journey with Topical Steroid Withdrawal (TSW) after undergoing breast explant surgery. TSW is a severe reaction that occurs when moderate- or high-potency topical steroids are used on skin for a prolonged period, according to the National Eczema Society.
Now, Crawley — who shares a daughter with husband Ryan Dawkins — shared that she wants to “help other women fight for their health and to be seen within the health care industry.” (Crawley and Dawkins welcomed their daughter, Rowen, via surrogate in 2024.)
“I had a lot of doctors steering me in the wrong way and postponing my healing, delaying my healing and giving me the wrong diagnosis, the wrong treatments,” Crawley said. “So it’s kind of empowered me so deeply and embedded in my soul that this fire in me has come back of, like, ‘I’m going to heal. I’m not only going to heal for myself but for my daughter and for my husband and for the life I have now.’”
She continued, “So to wrap it up in a little bow, it’s like, I really deeply appreciate even the smallest moments now because I know what it’s like to not be able to get out of my bed and to not be able to look in a mirror for months at a time. To hate what I see. To not see myself and to see a shell of a human being.”
With this perspective, Crawley also has a newfound appreciation for her hair.
“I had lost all of my hair twice in the last couple of years. Like, 90 percent of it,” she said. “I was just like, had shreds and wore hats all of them and hid. But now I tell Ryan every night, I’m like, ‘She back. She back.’ I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I would do anything for this hair.’ I see my gray hair come in and I’m like, ‘I f***ing have hair.’ But it’s hair, you know. Like, I love it. I love the things that I never appreciated before.”
Crawley shared that she used to look at her husband and question why he was married to her, adding that she felt like she looked “like a troll.”
“I don’t even see myself. But I look at my hair and every day … I’m just so thankful. I’m thankful that I have it. I’m thankful that I don’t have to hide,” she said. “I don’t even like wearing makeup anymore because — I haven’t been able to wear makeup for a couple years now because my skin was so bad — but I’m like, ‘I don’t even want to wear it because I love feeling my skin and seeing how soft it is.’ I see my wrinkles and I’m like, ‘But it’s good skin. But it’s not inflamed and it’s healthy skin.’ I’ll take a wrinkle any day.”
She continued, “It’s because I’ve been laughing and smiling and feeling alive again. That’s why we get those wrinkles. If I was to be a corpsey, like I want my daughter to see me … I want her to see all these lines because it means I’m living and laughing, you know, I just have a very deep appreciation for life now when I’ve been so sick.”
