Here’s something I’ve only learned recently about carrying grief: moving forward is a choice. It’s not something that happens automatically. It’s a decision you have to make every day: to move towards the possibilities of the future, rather than dwell on the pleasure or pain of the past.

This is not my natural inclination. I’ve always been a nostalgic person, happy to bathe in the sepia-toned memories, the old songs and elevated feelings of the past, replaying them over and over. I loved my old life. I miss it. Then I meet someone like Gabby Giffords. She has every reason to long for her previous life — the life she had fifteen years ago, with the promise of a bright future and youthful ease that she shared with her husband Senator Mark Kelly; the life she had before a would-be assassin’s bullet robbed her of it.

But Gabby doesn’t dwell on comparing her life then and now. She doesn’t rail against all that was stolen from her. She chooses her future over her past. She moves forward — and does so with stunning perseverance, grace and optimism.

I take a lot of inspiration from Gabby. Every day we have a choice of how to live these all too brief moments on Earth. So lately, I too try to stay in the present, with an eye to the future, rather than a mind cast to the past.

You can see our full conversation tonight at 8p (et) on Scripps News. You can also watch it on Scripps YouTube channel and via the app.

I’d love to hear what you think of our conversation.

It’s been a minute or two. I’ve been busy trying to reinvent and rebuild my life after loss, but I know I’m overdue for an update. So here’s where I am 20 months into grief:

I’m doing a good job of discovering new places and meeting interesting people. For the past six or seven months, I’ve made a practice of saying yes a lot more than no. Yes to dinner parties, talks at the library, networking lunches, and travel to friends in other cities. The practice of yes paid off in helping me find a few stimulating communities that I never knew existed. I also find that I recently have more energy to reconnect with old friends, those who’ve been patiently waiting in the wings for me to emerge from my fog.

Maybe it’s springtime, maybe it’s longer days with more light. Maybe it’s more time passing.

It feels good to be taking on cool new professional endeavors too. My Reinvention Retreat went well last weekend. The 22 women who took part now feel like familiar friends, though most of us didn’t know each other before we started sharing and creating our own reinvented paths forward. My co-leader and I are already talking about the next one.

My new TV show “Connected with Alisyn Camerota” on Friday nights on the Scripps news network continues to be super gratifying. These in-depth interviews with fascinating people offer me a lot of guidance and inspiration. I hope you caught the latest episode with former hostage Eli Sharabi: https://www.scrippsnews.com/shows/connected-with-alisyn-camerota/connected-with-alisyn-camerota-eli-sharabi-recalls-491-days-as-a-hostage

The one place where I’m falling behind is here. I’m having a hard time keeping up with updates. I find it challenging to create a new life and chronicle it at the same time. So I’ve decided to pause subscription payments until I can carve out a more consistent posting cadence.

Please know how much I appreciate you being on this journey with me and being invested in my experience. Thank you for all the support and well wishes.

I look forward to continuing to share this space and spreading whatever wisdom I’m gaining along the way.

Love to hear where you are on the path.

I first met and interviewed Esther Salas shortly after that attack. She was still raw with grief and terrified about her husband Mark’s tenuous hold on life. But on the morning I interviewed her at CNN, she got word from his doctors that Mark had turned a corner and would survive. She remembers that day and credits that call with allowing her to start the journey of repair and healing.

As you’ll hear in this interview, Esther Salas has (miraculously) let go of anger towards her son’s killer. She’s amazing in her ability to reclaim joy and harness her life force to move forward. (I’m grateful for the tips she shared with me here. We talk about music too, which can be so hard to hear when you’re grieving, but how for her, it’s become celebratory again).

But even with her healing, she’ll never stop speaking out about the grossly irresponsible and dangerous rhetoric coming from our “leaders.” Other judges’ lives have been destroyed as a result of the amped up rhetoric. As you’ll hear, judges are under more threat today than ever before. Salas also explains a disgusting doxxing hoax currently going around the country, invoking the name of her murdered son, Daniel.

https://www.scrippsnews.com/shows/connected-with-alisyn-camerota/connected-with-alisyn-camerota-when-violence-came-to-judge-esther-salas-door

I’m so grateful that my job allows me to be in the company of people like Esther Salas and that I get to soak up some of her wisdom and spirit. Because of conversations like this,

I too feel like I’m turning a corner in my own grief.

I wish you all a peaceful Easter. May it be filled with rebirth, renewal and hope.

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It was really nice to connect with fmr. Gov. John Kasich, my old friend and colleague from my FOX and CNN days. I’ve always appreciated his plainspokenness and no nonsense manner, so when …

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I’m still feeling grateful and uplifted after my recent conversation with Eli Sharabi. Eli was one of the 251 innocent people that Hamas abducted on Oct. 7th. He was tortured, starved and beaten. Hamas held Eli hostage for 491 days, mostly in dark, cramped, worm-infested underground tunnels. On the day he was finally freed, he learned his wife and two teenage daughters had been murdered on Oct. 7th by the terrorists.

And yet…Eli is traveling the world, sharing his story, making sure the atrocities are not forgotten or downplayed. He does it while carrying his trauma, loss and grief.

Of course, the logical question is how can he carry on?

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One of the first messages a grief counselor shared with Tim and me was

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Hi Friends,

First, let me tell you about my cool new job. I’ve joined the Scripps News Network as their Special Events Anchor. It’s a dream gig for me at this moment in my life. I get to work with a team of talented, wonderful journalists AND interview super compelling people AND stay out of the daily stomach-churning stress of this never-ceasing news cycle (a description which woefully underplays the cruelty and hypocrisy we’re witnessing). Those great advantages feel made-to-order for me and I’m grateful.

My first interview was on Friday with my old CNN colleague and friend . You might have heard a thing or two about Don last week when Trump and the DOJ were desperately, and futilely, trying to charge him with a crime for covering an ICE protest inside a St. Paul church. They failed, but Don doesn’t believe their attempts are over.

But this post isn’t about politics or even ICE’s cruel tactics on the streets of our cities. It’s about what was going on emotionally for me behind the clips you may have seen of this interview. It’s about the many dimensions of grief.

I discover something new about grief at every turn. My revelation this month is how dumbfounded we all are by grief’s inherent duality.

The photos above capture a bit of this: in the first Don and I are laughing and high-fiving, about being together again, nearly a dozen years after we were first paired up on his primetime CNN show in 2014 (before I landed at New Day). In the next photo, we’re crying about the loss and grief we’ve both experienced in our lives and had to process on-the-air.

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Happy New Year Friends,

As you know, I spent much of 2025 deep in the daunting work of trying to rebuild and reinvent my life after loss. It’s very weird to find yourself in a situation where everything that gave your life structure and purpose falls away: the daily joys and demands of having kids at home, the comfort and partnership of a happy marriage, and the challenges and gratification of a big TV job. The absence of those things leaves a lot of blank space. A lot of veeeeery quiet hours. And in losing Tim, I’ve lost the one person with the clearest insight and most loving support who could help me navigate what comes next. I have to muddle down this dark, uncharted path on my own.

Here’s what I’ve learned this past year:

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Jill Hornick (above) and her colleagues have been working without pay for a month. On Thursday, she got a paystub with a $0 on it. I strongly urge you to listen to what else Jill told my co-anchors and me on Thursday when we interviewed her on our YouTube morning show Connecting America. She reveals what’s going on behind-the-scenes at SSA under the Trump Administration. She describes it as “unconscionable.”

Jill’s no stranger to government shutdowns. Her first was 1995. As she describes it, back then SSA employees and managers all banded together to get through the challenge. But “something is different this time,” she says. This time is more dire. That’s because employees are being forced by Commissioner Frank Bisignano to go into the office, rather than telework from home. That means they have to pay for gas/commuting/parking/childcare/etc. while they are not getting paid. Workers are not asking much from Bisignano: they’ll keep working, just let them do it from home. But he’s threatening retribution if they don’t show up. Jill has tried to reach out to Bisignano personally to no avail. (I also tried to reach him to get his side, but did not get a response).

Jill describes this month as “really traumatic.” She feels nauseated for portions of every day. Some of her colleagues cannot pay their cellphone bills…or pay for their children or pets health care needs. She urges Congress to pass a clean C.R. and end the shutdown.

I have my own recent personal experience with Social Security’s non-sensical cruelty…

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Hi Friends,

It’s been six weeks since I became an empty nester. Since then I’ve been staying in a LOT of motion, trying to stave off the “empty” part of this strange new nest. I’m casting a wide net, searching for a place, or community, or experience, or mythical land that will bring a feeling of fullness into some empty space.

Here’s what I’ve tried:

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T-minus 48 hours until I officially become an empty-nester…emphasis on empty. This is an emotional time. Some days are better than others, some are even great with lots of bursts of laughter and potential, but all feel freighted with anticipatory emptiness. So, I was buoyed this morning to find this link to the 2025 Global Resiliency Conference in my inbox.

https://vimeo.com/event/4972781/14392762bd

This conference is the brainchild of Joy Miller (yes, her name is really Joy). She believes passionately in the healing power of resiliency and tries to spread the word about how to harness it. You can find my chat on the subject with my dear friend Stepehanie Szostak at the 3:58:15 time stamp.

I’d also like to call your attention to the message from my old pal Michelle Hord at 55:17. Michelle and I were 20-something crime fighters together when we worked at Americas Most Wanted in the 90’s. Since then, Michelle has endured the unthinkable tragedy of her 7-year-old daughter Gabrielle being murdered. And yet…here she is…with the same grace and spirit she’s always embodied…to help the rest of us understand how to move forward through despair.

As Michelle says of the murder, “The chapter I did not write will not define my story.”

Amen. Wishing us all peace, understanding and gratitude on this beautiful autumn day.

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Here’s something I’ve learned over the past year: having to reinvent yourself, your family life, and your career after a catastrophe is not for the faint of heart. It can be messy and crazy-making. This year I’ve mostly felt unmoored, dizzy and disoriented. I often don’t know what day it is. Or month. I often look around my house and wonder, how is this blank canvas my life?

In 2021, when I left the morning anchor desk on CNN’s New Day to anchor Newsroom in the afternoon, I was relieved to retire my 3am alarm clock and my pitch-black commute into the city. I was also delighted to be done with my forced monastic lifestyle of lights out 8pm, no nighttime TV (what was this The Crown people spoke of?) and zero wine with dinner. I would no longer feel jet-lagged through most of every day. I vowed never to go back to what was, for me, a physically punishing schedule.

But when the foundation of your world crumbles, it rearranges your thinking about what’s livable, doable, and desirable.

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