Saying goodbye to something this amazing is hard,” she said on the Sept. 26 Today broadcast. “It weighed a lot on me. I went back and forth and back and forth, and then I thought to myself, ‘You know, I think this decade, I think I’m going to have to start choosing me.'”
But as she approached a new milestone in her life, the journalist realized that it was time to say goodbye to the beloved 17-year-gig.
“I realized that it was time for me to turn the page at 60, and to try something new,” she said through tears. “I remembered standing outside looking at these beautiful bunch of people with these gorgeous signs, and I thought, ‘This is what the top of the wave feels like for me.’ And I thought it can’t get better, and I decided that this is the right time for me to kind of move on.”
Following her emotional departure, Hoda revealed that she planned to spend more time with her daughters, Haley, 7, and Hope, 5, whom she shares with ex Joel Schiffman.
“Obviously I had my kiddos late in life, and I was thinking that they deserve a bigger piece of my time pie that I have,” she continued. “I feel like we only have a finite amount of time. And so, with all that being said, this is the hardest thing in the world.”
As for how the mom of two plans to spend her much-deserved time off, well she’s going to start putting her health and wellness first.
