When Hoda Kotb found out she had breast cancer in early 2007, she considered keeping the diagnosis private. The TODAY co-anchor was 43 at the time. She worried people would look at her with pity and had a hard time accepting the news herself.
As a journalist, taking her personal life public was a tough thing to do, she noted. “I wasn’t going to say anything about it and I wanted to forget about it, but someone encouraged me to say something,” Hoda . In October 2007, Hoda on TODAY.
The was overwhelming, with women hugging her on the street and some telling her she inspired them to get their . Since then, Hoda has opened up about seeing her mastectomy scars, the impact on her self-image and how the disease . She’s also shared the positive changes she’s made and noticed as a survivor.
Here is some of Hoda’s most powerful advice about dealing with breast cancer: Sometimes, the scariest thing in the world — like cancer — becomes the thing that makes you fearless, Hoda said. Around the time she found out she was ill, TODAY was adding the fourth hour to its lineup. Hoda decided to approach to the “head honcho” to pitch herself as a co-host — something she would have been reluctant to do before her diagnosis.
But knowing her life could be cut short made her “wildly fearless.” She got the job. “I thought, ‘Oh my God, if I hadn’t gotten sick, I wouldn’t have been brave and if I wasn’t going to be brave, I wouldn’t be there and I wouldn’t be here,.