For Hoda Kotb, mom duty doesn’t end at bedtime.
The former Today co-anchor, 62, got candid about caring for her youngest daughter, Hope, 7, who has type 1 diabetes, during her Joy 101 Fall Retreat.
“Everyone’s got something,” Kotb told USA Today. “I worry about my youngest daughter who has diabetes. I am concerned. I go to sleep, I watch my phone all night to see what her numbers are doing. I wake up and see. That’s just constant. That is how it is.”
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Finding a Way to Recharge
The three-day retreat, which sold out with 350 attendees, is part of how Kotb copes with that constant worry. Guests could work out with her trainer, try a breathwork workshop, and unwind in a sound bath — and Kotb was right there with them.
“I can go in there and do a breathwork [session] and release everything I’m carrying,” she told the outlet. “And now I go back to Hope and Haley, tank full, let’s go.”
She also knows plenty of other parents and caregivers are in the same boat. “We’re all caring for someone who needs a lot of stuff, or we’re going through life stuff, and I just feel like get on your knees and then go climb the mountain!”
Hope’s Diagnosis
Kotb, who shares Hope and 9-year-old Haley with ex-fiancé Joel Schiffman, first revealed Hope’s diagnosis in a May 2025 People cover story.
“It’s kind of constant care for Hope. We’re monitoring her 24/7,” Kotb told People, explaining that Hope needed four or five shots a day for a year before the family found other ways to get her what she needs. Still, she stressed that her daughter is “a happy, healthy, rambunctious, amazing kid,” adding, “Diabetes is a part of her but not all of her. I hope it shapes her but never defines her.”
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease that keeps the pancreas from making insulin, which means blood sugar has to be watched around the clock, including overnight. Kotb didn’t say exactly what she’s checking on her phone, but many families rely on continuous glucose monitors that send a child’s readings straight to a parent’s device.
Hope’s health was also one of the reasons Kotb decided to leave Today. “It wasn’t that alone,” she told People. “But if you look at it cumulatively, it was a part of that decision.” As she put it in a letter to her NBC colleagues at the time, “My daughters and my mom need and deserve a bigger slice of my time pie.”
