Better: How I Let Go of Control, Held On to Hope, and Found Joy in My Darkest Hour - Softcover

Robach, Amy

 
9780553391466: Better: How I Let Go of Control, Held On to Hope, and Found Joy in My Darkest Hour
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0553391461 ISBN 13: 9780553391466
Verlag: Random House Publishing Group, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “An inspiring story of coming back from cancer and learning to cherish every moment.”—People

“I have breast cancer.” When Good Morning America anchor Amy Robach revealed her shocking diagnosis on live television in November 2013, the seasoned news reporter embarked on the most difficult and illuminating journey of her life. In this intimate memoir she retraces the twelve months following her announcement and speaks candidly, for the first time, about how her illness affected her family life and her marriage, tapped into her deepest fears and strengths, and transformed her in ways she never could have imagined.

Only weeks earlier, in September 2013, ABC producers asked Robach to get an on-air mammogram to highlight Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Her first instinct was to say no—there was no history of cancer in her family, she was only forty years old, and she felt strange drawing attention to herself when she had no personal connection to the issue. (She’d been meaning to get her first mammogram that year but had conveniently “lost” the prescription.) Her colleague Robin Roberts, herself a cancer survivor, convinced her to do it with one simple sentence: “I can pretty much guarantee it will save a life.”

To Robach’s surprise, the life she saved was her own: Tests revealed malignant tumors in her breast, and she immediately underwent a bilateral mastectomy, followed by six months of chemotherapy treatments.

Better is more than a story of illness and recovery. Robach recounts the day she and her husband, Andrew Shue, got the terrible news; the difficulty of telling her two young daughters, and the challenges of carrying on with the everyday duties of parenting, nurturing a fledgling second marriage, and managing a public career. She lays bare the emotional toll of her experience and mines her past for the significant moments that gave her the resilience to face each day. And she describes the incredible support network that lifted her when she hit bottom.

With honesty, humility, and humor, Robach connects deeply with women just like her who have struggled with any kind of sudden adversity. More important, she shares valuable wisdom about the power of the human spirit to endure the worst—and find the way to better.

Praise for Better

“By selflessly sharing the incredible story of her unexpected journey with breast cancer, Amy has given countless others hope. Better is the perfect title for her beautiful book. Sitting next to her every morning at GMA, I’m blessed to experience how my dear colleague and friend makes everything and everyone better.”—Robin Roberts, co-anchor of Good Morning America

“Amy is tough as nails and tenderhearted. The perfect combination, no? I have loved her for years, but never more than when I watched her beat cancer with such strength and grace. Her book is full of hope and healing—for Amy, and for all of us.”—Hoda Kotb, co-host of Today

“[Robach’s] beautiful new book, Better, is an exploration of her battle with breast cancer. What I love about it is that she never claims to be fearless; she was petrified. . . . Super inspiring stuff, the kind we need way more of in general.”—Meredith Rollins, editor in chief, Redbook

“With the amazing background to Robach’s discovery of her disease, plus her inspirational tenacity during her career, readers will likely never miss their annual mammogram again. For all patient health collections.”—Library Journal

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Amy Robach is an American television journalist and anchor for ABC’s Good Morning America. Previously, she was the co-host of the Saturday edition of NBC’s Today, a national correspondent for NBC News, and an anchor on MSNBC. Over the past twenty years, she has traveled the country and the world, interviewing political figures such as President Barack Obama, John McCain, Nancy Pelosi, and John Edwards, as well as newsmakers like Malala Yousafzai, Oprah Winfrey, and Prince Harry. Robach’s #GIRLPOWER series on ABC profiles influential women including the first and only four-star female Navy admiral, Michelle Howard, and FEED founder Lauren Bush Lauren. A Michigan native and graduate of the University of Georgia, Robach lives in New York City with her husband, two young daughters, and stepson.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter One

You Want Me to Do What?

I’ve never been a big believer in fate. Too many awful things happen to too many wonderful people for me to accept that there’s a larger plan for “the greater good.” But that said, I have to admit, the events that led to my diagnosis all felt very fated.

I have so many reflections that begin with what if and thank God. What if I had stayed at my previous job at NBC and never switched to ABC? Thank God I jumped networks. What if I hadn’t become a larger part of the Good Morning America family, which happened only because of an unexpected twist in GMA host Robin Roberts’s second cancer battle? I’d filled in for Robin every other week for nearly a year while she was on leave for a bone marrow transplant to fight myelodysplastic syndrome. Thank God I was the one who got to step in. If these things hadn’t happened, I might never have received the email that ultimately saved my life.

It was late September 2013. I was in the rural Pennsylvania home of Marie Monville, a sweet, pretty young mother of three whose husband had walked into a quiet Amish schoolhouse seven years earlier and gunned down ten little girls, killing five of them and then himself. Marie had written a memoir about her life before and after the shooting, and we were about to do her first network-television interview for ABC News. She had remarried, but she still lived in Amish Country. My producer, Kaitlyn Folmer, and I had driven out the night before and stayed at the Hotel Hershey, a few miles from Kaitlyn’s childhood home. It’s stunningly beautiful country, with horse-drawn carriages and pastoral farms—the last place you’d expect to find such a tragedy.

On the morning of the interview, I was still fine-tuning my questions and follow-ups as the crew finalized their camera positions and lighting. They placed Marie in front of the stone fireplace, and when I saw her there, I was struck by how incongruous it all seemed. This poised young woman in this pleasant house in bucolic Middle America had gone through a hell I couldn’t begin to understand.

We were about to start rolling when I glanced at my cellphone and saw a cryptic message from Good Morning America producer Sandra Aiken: “Can you call me? I have a delicate assignment I need to talk to you about.”

Standing in Marie Monville’s kitchen, I dialed into what we call the GMA rim, and when I was transferred to Sandra she seemed just the slightest bit flustered. “We’re going big for breast cancer awareness next month,” she said. “We’re going to ‘Go Pink’ in a major way, and we want to show women having live mammograms in our mammovan in Times Square.” She paused. “We’d also like to have a member of our GMA team participate, and we’d like you to be that anchor.”

My reaction was visceral. No way, no how. Never gonna happen, I thought. I knew that on-air medical screenings by members of the media, like Katie Couric’s colonoscopy on the Today show in 2000, raised awareness and saved lives. But Katie had a personal connection to colon cancer. Her husband Jay Monahan had succumbed to the disease, and she wanted to demystify a lifesaving test that many people avoid because it’s scary and uncomfortable. This was different. I’ve always prided myself on authenticity in my work, and this wasn’t a genuine personal cause for me.

“Sandra, I don’t think this is something I’m prepared to do,” I said. “I’ve never had a mammogram before, so to have my first in front of millions of people isn’t ideal.”

“I understand completely,” she said. “Let’s talk about it when you get back to the city. Can you hold off on a decision until then?”

I agreed to that much, but nothing more.

The interview was as intense and emotional as I’d imagined it would be. Just a few years earlier, Marie had enjoyed what must have looked like a perfect life, with beautiful children and a loving husband. But then she had a miscarriage, which seemed to affect her husband even more than it did her. He blamed God, and so he decided to take it out on God’s people—the Amish. She told us about the day he made a special effort to run out to the bus stop to say “goodbye” and “I love you” to their children. Only later would she realize why. This was the morning he had planned to execute his rampage. He had already purchased the ammunition and the rope to tie up his victims.

After reliving all this with Marie, I was glad to have the three-hour drive back to the city to decompress. Thinking about those schoolgirls made me want to run home to mine. I was once again reminded how lucky I was to have my family, my life, and my job. Which is when I remembered Sandra’s call.

As Kaitlyn drove, I called my husband and my mom and talked it out with them. My main concern was that it might be seen as exploitative or “stunt-ish.” I was afraid I would take heat from my colleagues and other media outlets for being part of a story that didn’t feel like it had much to do with me. I also imagined how vulnerable I would feel with millions of people watching me do something every other woman on the planet does only in the privacy of her doctor’s office. I didn’t want to expose myself, literally or figuratively. They both agreed that having a mammogram on live TV was probably not a good idea. Then I decided to call my longtime agent and friend, Henry Reisch.

“Henry, you’re never going to believe the phone call I just got,” I said, and blurted it all out.

“Whoa. I was not expecting that,” Henry said. “Are you going to do it?”

I quickly answered, “Well, I don’t want to, but I’m calling you to figure out if that’s the right answer.”

Henry suggested he ask around his office to see what the reaction was and we could go from there.

I was willing to listen to a few unbiased opinions, but my mind was made up. I had every intention to politely pass on this particular assignment.

The next morning was Friday, September 27, and Sandra was waiting for me when I walked off the set. “Can we talk?” she asked.

I was filling in for Josh Elliott, GMA’s news anchor, who was in Afghanistan. Filling in was a large part of my job at the time, serving as the news division’s utility infielder. If anyone from Good Morning America was off, I was on. If a host was missing, I hosted. If a newsreader was away, I read the news. Wherever there was a hole, I plugged it.

At the time, I had a temporary dressing room on the second floor of our Times Square offices, just above the studio where we broadcast GMA. Each of the anchors has a sanctuary where we prepare for the show, get our hair and makeup done, and speed-read a half dozen or so newspapers and our scripts. Sandra walked me up to mine, closed the door behind us, and explained why the producers had chosen me for this assignment.

“You’re forty,” she said. “And you’ve never had a mammogram. That puts you right in the middle of the demographic we’re hoping to reach.”

“Well, not only have I not had a mammogram,” I said, “but I purposefully lost the prescription for it that my doctor wrote me a year ago.” I made air quotes when I said “lost.”

As soon as my ob-gyn had handed it to me the previous October, I stuck the prescription in my purse and forgot about it. Every now and then, as I was digging in my bag for my wallet or my keys, I would find that crumpled piece of paper and...

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Verlag
Random House Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2017
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0553391461
ISBN 13 
9780553391466
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
272
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
gpsr@libri.de
gpsr@libri.de

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