“I want to punch you in the face.”
Yes, those words actually came out of my mouth. Like, out loud. A couple months ago. I’m slightly embarrassed to admit I was talking to my loving partner, Peter. He had just flown across the country and was set to wake up with me at four-something in the morning so that he could accompany me to my appearance on Good Morning America. I was going back on national TV for the first time since I’d signed off from my CNN show. I would be talking about the debut of my new Netflix show, The Trust. This was a big deal. In many ways, it felt like a rebirth. But that night before, I hadn’t been in a celebratory mood.
I was pissed off. I felt violent. I felt like I was going to explode. I am now in the process of understanding why, and this deep knowing has enabled me to change everything in my life.
I am not an angry person. Or maybe I am. There I go, silencing myself again.
When I signed off from CNN Newsroom on April 16, 2021, I couldn’t tell the whole truth. I wasn’t allowed to—and probably still am not. But I’m now on the other side of a profound life moment, of my unraveling.
This story really begins during my senior year of college, when my mother and I drove up to a strange house about a half hour from where I grew up in Atlanta. I was 21. Outside the house was my father’s silver Porsche. Inside the house was my father, with a woman who was not my mother. I reached for the car door to run into the house, to do or say I don’t know what. With my leg dragging out the passenger door, I screamed at my mother to stop the car and let me out. Instead she sped away, the passenger door slamming shut. Just recently, a friend told me my mom saved me that day: Had I gotten out of that car, I would have spent the rest of my life trying to unsee what I’d seen.
For years I watched my mother keep her mouth shut. I held on to that secret and said nothing about, or to, my father. This would be just the beginning of carrying bigger secrets and allowing myself to be muzzled —or rather, as I’m now learning, muzzling myself.
Ironic (or not) that I chose a career in TV journalism, which saw me wear a microphone to amplify the voiceless for a living. Problem was, I didn’t use my own. I see it all so clearly now: I rarely spoke up for myself.
CNN was always the dream. For 10 years it put me in millions of living rooms, allowing me to cover everything from the White House to school shootings to the pandemic. I became known for giving you the news, straight up, with dignity and compassion. And—after the 10 years I spent climbing the ranks of local news to get to the big leagues—I was good at it.
I was living my dream and saying yes to everything. YES to oil spills. YES to elections. Coal mine disasters. Hurricanes. Escaped inmates. Gun legislation. Yes to everything, yes to everyone.
I never said no. There would have always been someone hungrier and more telegenic if I had.
Behind the scenes, my yes-girl behavior was starting to snowball. CNN moved me from Atlanta to New York, but my producing team stayed behind; we would work long-distance. I could feel my tether to my executive producer begin to fray.
It wasn’t always like this. In fact, those first few years working together were pretty great. We bounced ideas off each other. We got excited about similar news stories. I adored his wife and kids—and he always knew whom I was dating. Our relationship was almost as sibling-like as it was collegial.
But after my move, our working relationship started to take a drastic turn. My producer made me feel as though I couldn’t do heavy-hitting interviews without him. Or, maybe, I allowed him to make it feel like I couldn’t do heavy-hitting interviews without him. The word gaslighting has become so cliché, but that’s what it felt like. Manipulation. Bullying.
Anyone who’s ever tried long-distance in any kind of relationship, romantic or professional, knows it wears on you. My producer was read-in on the news at all times—it was his job. When you work at any cable news network, email comes in fast and furiously. Sometimes that meant I would accidentally miss his emails. And I started to notice that if I didn’t respond to those emails right away, he would go dark.
Even worse, sometimes he would go dark during my live broadcasts. In front of hundreds of thousands of people. There would be days when I’d get on set, clip on my microphone, and slip my earpiece into my right ear. No “hello.” No check-in. Instead, I’d be greeted by someone less seasoned.
With live TV, there should always be a palpable sense of “I’ve got you” —which goes both ways between anchor and executive producer. I had to learn how to rely on myself and others to move through the show without him.
Sometimes he needed to communicate urgently with me—for instance, if he had gotten word there’d be a press conference and wanted me to know I’d need to ad-lib coming out of it. But depending on his mood, he might refuse to actually speak into my ear, instead writing me notes on the teleprompter during commercial breaks.
