Hoda Kotb will always remember how one conversation amid her cancer battle shaped the rest of her life. “I do remember that even the doctor said to me then, you know, one of the sort of side effects, especially at your age, which was in my 40s, early 40s, is you won’t be able to have children. And I was like, ‘Wait, what?’” Kotb, 60, recalled on the Monday, August 12, episode of the “Making Space” podcast.
“So this thing not only put limits on my life, but killed a dream.” Kotb noted that the news “didn’t kill [her] right then, but it killed a dream.” She added that it felt like “all these things were happening” and she was at a “pretty low” point in her life.
“I remember waking up one morning and saying to myself — it was like a lightning bolt — and it was like, I remember those four words. It was, you can’t scare me because the worst had happened. So now what? Now what am I afraid of?” she said.
“And so not being afraid released me. It made me free, it was amazing.” Kotb got emotional as she reflected on what she learned from her hardships.
“Asking for what you deserve is something that you should be able to do without worrying about, ‘Well I’m doing this because maybe I won’t live that long,’” she said. “We shouldn’t have to have that in order to propel us to ask for what we deserve. Like, why do you have to have a terrible diagnosis before you’re free?” Kotb revealed her breast cancer diagnosis and underwen.