Who Hoda Kotb Revealed Her Journey to After Her Double Mastectomy: A Book Overview
Hoda Kotb initially felt apprehensive about revealing her post-mastectomy body following her fight with cancer.
“Months and months after my surgery, but still no one has seen my breast yet,” Kotb, 61, shared in her new Jump and Find Joy: Embracing Change in Every Season of Life memoir, recounting a moment with her friend’s then-80-year-old aunt, Harriet. “I confided to her that I was feeling nervous. Without missing a beat, Harriet took my hand and said, ‘Come with me.’ She led me to a bathroom and closed the door.”
She continued, “I gave her a look as if to say she was out of her mind. I thought, ‘Does she really expect me to show her my breast? No way, that’s not happening.’ But before I could process it, she lifted her shirt and revealed her own!”
Kotb noted that Harriet had also gone through a mastectomy before there were any reconstruction options available.
“Pointing at her chest, she asked, ‘Not so bad, right?’ Lowering her shirt, she paused,” Kotb remembered. “I saw this courageous woman, took a deep breath, and counted three, two, one. Then I lifted my shirt. Harriet looked at me, shrugged, and said, ‘Not so bad.’”
Harriet then inquired if Kotb felt nervous about revealing her chest.
“Yes, it was indeed scary! It was absolutely terrifying,” Kotb recounted in her memoir. “But it was such a pivotal moment. It represented more than just someone seeing me undressed — it was someone helping me shed the shame.”
The former Today host was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007 and chose a mastectomy over multiple rounds of chemotherapy.
Hoda Kotb opened up about going through some of the “lowest moments” in her life. “I was navigating a divorce and breast cancer at the same time, and during that period, I remembered barely functioning, wondering to myself, ‘Is this it? Is this how it ends?’” Kotb, 59, disclosed to co-host Jenna Bush Hager during […]
“After my diagnosis, I consulted three different doctors. I had a mastectomy performed, and one doctor insisted, ‘You need chemotherapy.’ Another stated, ‘You don’t need it.’ A third said, ‘You can’t really go wrong either decision,’” Kotb recounted on an episode of her
“Making Space” podcast. “One physician even warned, ‘You’ll be dead if you don’t undergo it.’ I was in disbelief. Just thinking about it gives me chills.”
Kotb opted out of chemotherapy since her cancer had not spread to her lymph nodes.
“My decision became clear,” she stated. “I chose not to undergo chemotherapy, and it was the right choice for me. … After the diagnosis and surgery, I suddenly awoke and thought, ‘You can’t intimidate me.’ I was like, ‘What am I afraid of now?’”
At the time, Kotb was employed at Dateline and later felt empowered to pursue an opportunity at Today. She left the long-standing morning program earlier this year and has been cancer-free since 2007.
Jump and Find Joy: Embracing Change in Every Season of Life is available for purchase now.
