Unraveling, with Brooke Baldwin

Dearest Unravelers and Unravelers-to-be – 

On this weekend, my Birthday weekend (thank you so much for the well wishes), I want to tell you a story. It’s a story I wasn’t ready to tell you… until now.

I wanted to wait for the exactly the right moment to share this — because I got a dose of real, beautiful clarity recently. And then as though the Universe wasn’t finished sending me this message, She placed one of my all-time heroes right in front of me this week. This woman, this legend, this icon dropped such wisdom (which I short-handed into two words and an f-bomb on a post-it, see below — yes even the most elegant among us swear like sailors to make a point) that I raced home, scribbled her words down and slapped it up on my bathroom mirror.

Do you ever have that recurring dream? You know, the dream where you’re back in high school or college, and suddenly you’re sitting in a classroom and you’re supposed to be head down taking a final exam. Except — shit shit shit — you have absolutely no idea what the subject of the test is, feel panicked and completely unprepared and also have this knowing that “wait, I graduated college already — why am I back here?!?!” 

Ughhhhhhh.

Lemme let you in on what the equivalent of that is for a TV news anchor. Welcome to my brain and my dreams (read: occasional nightmares or as I jokingly refer to them, “news-mares”). I’ve had them on and off since leaving my 20 year career. In my recurring “news-mare,” I’m suddenly at a news desk. The cameras are pointed square on me. The lights are on. The papers (otherwise known as “hard copy” or backup scripts in case the teleprompter goes haywire) are completely out of order in a mess in front of me. I realize I’m wearing street clothes and my hair is looking crazy, no makeup and the glam team is racing toward me to try to at least fight a brush through my hair. But it’s always too late because someone on set suddenly yells at me: “You’re live!!!” In that moment of sheer panic, I literally have NO IDEA WHAT I AM SUPPOSED TO BE TALKING ABOUT. I look to the teleprompter hoping to be saved by the words written for me. But ohhhhh no. The teleprompter is all screwy — racing forward way too fast to keep up and then backward, the words completely jumbled. All the while I’m sitting there trying desperately to “be cool, be cool, be cool” and string some semblance of words together that I’m just completely making up because I have no clue what I’m even supposed to be doing.

Y’all.

I’m embarrassed to admit how many times this has happened to me in my sleep these last four years. 

Part of me thinks this has to be completely normal — some version of this happens to anyone who’s done any job for their entire adult career. Right???

Part of me thinks I have unfinished business in this industry — an industry I loved until one day, I didn’t. Or is it unfinished business… in my soul?

Who has read the seminal work by Bessel van der Kolk The Body Keeps the Score? There are things — secrets (sometimes not so secret), little t or big T traumas — that our bodies will hold on to until our brains and hearts consciously identify and process and then ultimately, enable us to move on.

I’ve been on a real Unraveling journey these last few years to identify and process stuff from my childhood, my current relationships and my career. (I bet, since you're reading this, you’re on a similar journey yourself.) I’ve wept. Danced. Bashed pillows with a wiffle ball bat. Leaned on my girlfriends. Screamed in the car. Got really still. Meditated. Prayed. Fell in love. Stopped drinking. Laughed. Called my mom. 

As I’m sure so many of you can relate, when life hands you lemons, you have a choice: go down a dark spiral and become the victim or choose self-liberation. It was never a choice for me — only FREEDOM OR BUST. And that decision four years ago kicked off my entire Unraveling journey. It’s the reason I sit here and write to you today, hoping that my learnings, my truth-telling, can serve as lessons and a light for you. 

Holy hell, what a gift that was — and is still. That ending of a career chapter for me, specifically. I shudder to think of what my life might look like if my former boss at CNN hadn’t done that to (read: for) me. Today, I could hug him for forcing me out.

So — imagine this: a few months ago, I’m in a car, fighting LA traffic to make this dinner when my cell phone rings. It’s my agent Josh. He shares some news: I’m being considered for a TV News job, a job that seemingly dropped out of the sky. I wasn’t looking for this kind of job — yet, BOOM, it suddenly appeared. I was completely flattered. But also… would I want this job?! I knew the selection process would be a long and thorough one. But I could potentially be back in a studio doing a version of the thing I used to love. Hmmmmm. I also knew this would entail some sort of screen test, and that <<you guessed it>> would involve me reading from a teleprompter for the first time in a long time.

Just a reminder — I read a teleprompter for 20 years. I was a pro. But I haven’t so much as glanced at one in four years. Not since I said goodbye from my show in the middle of the pandemic. Not since I left under not exactly the best of circumstances.

In the car I could start feeling my body lock up. My body remembers.

What was I to do? Say no thanks and pass up this huge opportunity? Or say yes — and no matter what happens with the job — face those news-mares head on. Do the damn thing. Read the prompter. Go be my lovely self. And show myself: I am the best version of me… no matter the outcome… TODAY.

Can you guess what I did?

KEEP SCROLLING or SUBSCRIBE to read about what happened next… and if I got the job!