Carol Lin spent decades in front of the camera at CNN, ABC, and Good Morning America, covering earthquakes, war zones, and the biggest headlines of a generation, and winning the awards to prove it. But as she puts it, she covered grief for a living, someone else’s tragedy was the currency that fed her stories, until life smacked her down and grief became her own. Her new memoir, When News Breaks: A Memoir of Love and War, is the story of what happens when the news breaks inside your own life.
Carol and Angie sat down as two authors with books launching almost the same week, and quickly realized how much they share, especially the hard-won understanding that a carefully curated career identity is not the same as who you actually are. Carol is candid about the red flags she ignored for years (including the day she woke up exhausted next to a freshly acquitted OJ Simpson and just wanted out), the loss of her husband, and how becoming a single mom finally taught her the value of boundaries and the meaning of choice.
They dig into why grief is an ecosystem and the greatest teacher, how to choose happiness even when you don’t feel it, building a portfolio of I’ve-done-it-before-I-can-do-it-again, and writing a book for an audience of one. Press play, and go find beauty in the break. (Please note: this conversation includes candid discussion of grief and loss.)
Carol Lin is a veteran broadcast journalist and the author of the memoir When News Breaks: A Memoir of Love and War. Over a decades-long career at CNN, ABC, and Good Morning America, she covered earthquakes, wildfires, war zones, and the defining headlines of an era, earning the industry’s top accolades along the way. Her memoir turns the lens on herself, using the backdrop of a high-stakes career to tell a deeply personal story of love, loss, and reinvention, of covering grief for a living until grief became her own teacher after the death of her husband, and of rebuilding a life and identity as a single mother. Honest and vulnerable, she writes about boundaries, the difference between sadness and grief, the power of choosing your perspective, and finding beauty in the break, the phrase she uses to sign her books. She wrote it, above all, for her daughter, so she’d know that you don’t have to be perfect, just authentic. When News Breaks is available everywhere books are sold.
Angie Hello everybody, and welcome back to No More Mondays, the show where we believe you can have a thriving career, business, and an amazing life on your terms. And as always, I am your host, Angie Callen. If you tuned in last week, you heard some exciting news, and if you didn’t tune in last week, shame on you, and also, here’s the news: I wrote a book. It is called Scary Good: Discovering Life Beyond the Sunday Scaries, and it is a book for the burnout, the brave, and everyone in between. It is coming to an Amazon shelf near you on January eighth, and I want you to be in the loop on how to get your hands on it. So head on over to scarygoodread.com/waitlist, and you can grab a front-row seat to the action. And today’s episode is actually quite timely with the fact that I have a book coming out, and it’s a little personal, because not only is my book coming out in a few weeks, but tomorrow, yes, tomorrow, Carol Lin releases her book, When News Breaks: A Memoir of Love and War. I can’t wait for you to meet Carol, because yes, we are both writers, and we both have new stories hitting the shelves, but when she and I first sat down, we realized how much we have in common, how many common themes are in our books, and just how much we both know what it means to rebuild, realign, and live life on purpose. Her story isn’t just about newsrooms and war zones and breaking headlines, even though that’s in there, it’s about what breaks inside us when the life we built starts to fall apart, and what happens when you have the courage to pick up the pieces. I can’t wait another second. Carol, welcome to No More Mondays.
Carol I love that, Angie, and I love your book. I’m so privileged to be an early reader, and it is scary good. I wanted to take notes the whole time, but I wanted to stay in reader mode just to drink it all in. There are so many great stories, your whole arc, we could just talk about you this whole time.
Angie Seriously? Well, we’re not going to, we’re going to talk about you. And even though I know you’re a journalist and you’re used to being the one on the other end of the interviews, I really want to dig into where this book manifested from. So let’s lay a little groundwork for everybody. You spent decades in front of a camera doing the good, traditional journalism and working on some really meaty stuff, CNN, ABC, Good Morning America, there are some accolades here, folks, we are in good company. And I’m wondering, when you were working in what we know is a really challenging, demanding field, when did you start to get these inklings that the career you built didn’t align with the person you were becoming, when did that start to take seed for you?
Carol Early on, but I didn’t recognize the signs, and I do relate to what you wrote in your book, because I think we’re very similar in that way. I think we knew before we knew, and it wasn’t until things actually broke that we could reflect back and say, wait a minute, this isn’t right for me. So here are some moments. After the San Francisco earthquake, I was working 24/7, and I loved it, I loved the work, I loved the people I was working with, but I didn’t realize that my body and my brain were suffering because of the workload, the stress, a lot of the things I was seeing as bodies were getting pulled out of rubble. And as much as we build this filter that says, I can do this, I’m tougher than that, this is my job, it’s them, not me, you can tell yourself that so many times, but you don’t realize what’s happening inside of you as a human being, this doubt is taking root, whether this is a healthy way to live, whether you’re processing these emotions. And fast forward a number of years, I found myself on an airplane, and I was so exhausted I just passed out on the flight, and then I woke up and OJ Simpson was sitting next to me. OJ Simpson, sitting next to me. He had just been acquitted in his first trial, the murder trial, and for most people that would be a dream opportunity for a journalist, and instead, Angie, the last thing I wanted to do was talk to this man. I woke up and I had drool on the side of my face, and I just thought to myself, I just want to get out of here. Okay, that’s a big red flag. I’m at a network, I should be passing out my business card, but I didn’t. I was so exhausted from flying 24/7, I would drop in on JonBenét Ramsey and then get shot out of a cannon, is what it felt like, the next day to a wildfire or a tornado, and I lived on airplanes the entire time, when the being that I am needs space to breathe and process, and I didn’t give myself that. So no, I did not ask OJ Simpson for an interview. What kind of journalist does that make me? And yet my career did move on. And writing about this for the first time in the book is the first time I’d ever said out loud that I willingly let go of a potential story, because I think by then, I was starting to break.
Angie It’s so interesting that you said that, because I have so many visuals like that. I have the visual of you sitting next to OJ Simpson, and I also have the visual, in all honesty, of exactly where I was when he was acquitted. I know exactly where I was, because that’s one of those really impressionable moments in time, which, by the way, you were part of many of these as a journalist, bringing us really big, heavy news. So on top of the fact that you’re in a physically demanding, time-intensive job, you’re also dealing with subject matter and delivering that to the people, before you could go look this stuff up on the internet, y’all, that has an extra level of weight. And when we think about this idea of, I realized it early on but didn’t see the signs, or maybe wasn’t willing to admit them to myself, let alone do something about it, that’s a big deal.
Carol It’s a big fall waiting to happen, yes it is. And to recognize, it’s not to say that I as a journalist or I as a woman could not do my job. I want my awards, the accolades of the industry, to speak for themselves. But I wrote the book from a very honest, vulnerable point of view, because I want people to understand that you can win all those awards, you can stand in a war zone, and that human being in front of you may not be everything that you see. Because over time we build up our protective layers, we begin to lean on those accolades, we convince ourselves who we are and what we have to be, because that train just gets faster, you keep adding cars, and pretty soon you’re just stuck, because what else are you going to be? And that’s one of the things I really admire about your story, Angie, because the question you’re asking is, how do you know when it’s time to make that change, and how do you find the courage? And you and I talked a lot about grief. I covered grief for a living, someone else’s tragedy was the currency that fed my story, that produced my live shot, that won me that award. Journalists are criticized for that, but it’s part of the job. And I think young people really need to understand that it’s not the money, because trust me, I was making a lot of money at a certain point in my career, and it was never going to compensate for the things that I lost, the time that I would never claw back. Life catches up to us, and when we face that moment of grief, whether it’s the loss of a job or a home or a husband or a partner, it’s going to happen, and what in us, in our life experience, has prepared us for that moment? I was just sailing along on a sea of bad news, because that was my job. But it wasn’t until life smacked me down, being after 9/11 and my husband and I making this decision to finally go for a child, to create something positive, and then six months later, when he was diagnosed with a fatal cancer, that it was a giant wake-up call. It’s not to say professionals don’t move through very serious life events with grace and continue on in their careers, but for me, I did not build up enough mental and social equity with myself, because I just left everybody behind, I just jumped on a plane, and to say no to my boss was never an option. It wasn’t until this child came into my life that I learned the value of boundaries. And I just happened to be in a career where that’s not acceptable. When it came to a choice, after losing my husband, about whether I was going to go to the Middle East and be based out of Jerusalem with a baby, that was a giant wake-up call. And Angie, when you and I got to talk about grief, we got actually very excited, because grief is not what everybody thinks it is, it is a whole thing.
Angie Oh yeah, and it’s not linear.
Carol It’s the master class, it’s the greatest teacher I’ve ever had, I think it’s made me a better, stronger person. And the career that I once had, so many people to this day say, do you miss it? And it’s like, no, look at all the exciting stuff that happened after, there’s so much afterlife that there is to look forward to. So don’t lock into this identity that is so carefully curated, because we as individuals, and especially we as women, are so much more than we can imagine.
Angie There are so many pieces in what you just outlined, and the one that stands out most to me is the irony, or maybe even the symbolism, in the fact that as somebody whose job was to report on grief, and who won awards on grief, the very thing that finally provided the wake-up call was grief.
Carol Grief, yeah, that teacher, the one we would never invite into our homes or our lives, is the one that’s going to be your guide, if you let it, if you don’t let it define you, because you define you. Grief doesn’t define you, the career doesn’t define you, the money doesn’t define you. It’s when you take that opportunity and you say, what is this, why is this happening, because trust me, when you get a smackdown like that, you say, why me, what did I do to deserve this? Give yourself that moment, but then ask yourself, so what am I going to do with this, how am I going to get to a place where I can see it for what it is, accept it, and let it lead me? And I’m a big believer in therapy, there is no shame in seeking therapy, I write a little bit about that, there are professionals trained to help. But you also have to create ownership of your own mindset and say, okay, this happened, I’m going to have a choice here. Somebody once told me, Carol, you need to sit in this, you need to feel it, and I thought, okay, and then I got a little tired of that, Angie, to be honest, I was just so sad, and sadness is different than grief. Grief is an ecosystem, and you get to cultivate and curate what you want to get out of the experience, but you have to make the choice, you have to say, I choose happiness. So for a while there, I gave myself some mental space to say, I’m not going to sit in my sadness, I’m not going to feel sorry for myself, I’m going to stop asking why, and I’m going to focus on what, and on how. And I was blessed to have this baby, because she got me up, she kicked my ass, and babies don’t read the room, they only know what they know. But if not a baby, then there’ll be something else. And what I read in your advance reader copy is that you weren’t going to allow yourself to wallow, you gave yourself space. By the way, one of my great takeaways from your book is, for the love of tacos, it’s a phrase Angie uses in her book.
Angie Look, when you’ve got a cat named Taco, it kind of works. But there’s something, for all of you who haven’t picked up on it, Carol and I got to connect a few weeks ago, and I think that conversation could have been three hours of substantive, meaningful conversation about what it is to be purposeful in life. And what’s so fascinating is you said something that’s a really good takeaway, that grief is an ecosystem. One of the things we talked about in our not-recorded conversation, which I actually wish I’d recorded because it was a great episode in itself, is that joy and grief are so close together, and you had an actual physical example of that, the joy of a child with the juxtaposition of the grief of loss. And I also think about joy as being a state, so it’s an ecosystem, and to me, happiness and sadness sit at that more situational level, so I am happy about the thing that’s happening, but I have joy regardless. Or I may be in a state of grief, but I can still choose to find happiness instead of the sadness and wallowing. And that’s really where the word choice, to me, is the most important word in all of that, that we choose how we meet these circumstances, and the perspective and the agency we give them. Because you can choose to be miserable in a miserable situation, or you can look at it and say, how is this happening for me?
Carol And that’s the great thing about memoir and nonfiction, because you’ve got real-life examples, because it’s easy for people to look at both of us and say, yeah, but you sit in a place of privilege, look at you guys, you’ve got your bookshelves.
Angie I didn’t have a bookshelf in the bus, y’all. I didn’t have a bookshelf in the bus.
Carol You’ve got all that going on. And when I get to read your book, I see where you came from, all that you built with the mental brick and mortar, the emotional brick and mortar you put into your life, and all that you lost, and then all that you clawed back. It’s easy to say somebody is superhuman, but none of us is, we all come from that place. So when you talk about choice, even if someone says, oh, it’s so easy for you to talk about choice, no, I just choose the word choice. Even if I feel like a victim, like it’s all happening to me, I’m just going to tell myself, even if it’s a lie at first, I’m going to feel a choice in this. What do I have the power to choose? And I’m going to choose happiness, even if I don’t feel it. And I’m going to allow my brain, because our brains are incredible, the capacity a brain has to heal, to process grief, to acclimate you to a new reality, is phenomenal when you look at brain science. So choose, and then look for the signs, but take action. And getting back to grief and joy being like siblings, I mentioned to you, after my husband died, people were worried that if they invited me to a wedding it would be too hard on me, and I’m like, no, I want to go, and I experience other people’s joy, even to this day, so much more exquisitely, vividly. I used to never cry at weddings, and now I cry at weddings all the time, because I understand so deeply what those vows mean, and that’s the master class of grief. I remember the first wedding I went to after, and I thought, I wonder how this is going to feel, and I was by myself, and the moment those two looked at each other up there, I just started bawling, because I finally understood what it means. And that’s where it gets exciting, because once you take those first steps, you can say to yourself, what I always say when I face something I’m terrified to do, I’ve done it before, I can do it again. It’s building a portfolio of life experiences where you can say, I can’t imagine walking into that room, I can’t imagine asking for that raise, I can’t imagine defending myself in this awful situation, but you know what, I’ve done it before, I can do it again. And that only comes with taking the risk of putting yourself out there, not hiding behind the emotion, but at a certain point making the choice to get in front of it, because that life experience has got your back, it’s going to be there for you.
Angie That’s why we get along. Because the hard things are going to happen, and we can either choose to make them harder, or choose to meet them with less resistance and let them teach us. Choose the perspective and build the thicker skin that makes the next hard thing less hard.
Carol Yes. And I’m curious, when you were writing, how you chose those specific moments, because they seem obvious when it’s so well edited and well written, but I’m curious what was going through your mind.
Angie I want your response to the same question too. For me, I don’t know that anything specific was going through my mind, because I was recalling what I remembered, so clearly those memories left some sort of impression on me, or shifted a perspective enough to be ingrained and quickly recalled when it was like, okay, what type of story do I have for this stage of life, where have I been resilient? So it was really about what I was able to draw out, and there was some stuff where I had to be like, okay, we won’t go into that, gotta edit it out, because these other ones are better representatives of whatever I was trying to show. So for me it was the natural recall of things falling into place, because those were the things that impressed upon me, the thing I was trying to teach or show insight around.
Carol Yeah, and I think you were badass and vulnerable at the same time. Like when you’re living in this bus, am I giving something away? There’s a whole thing there.
Angie Oh yeah, I’ve talked about the bus a few times around here, so it might not be complete news to anybody, but yes, there you go, lived in a bus, go read chapter six. How did you work through that? Because there are the literal stories that were the core of what you did, not who you were, I’m very careful to say it that way, they were the very core of what you did for so long, but then there is your actual story and everything that unraveled through that. How did you go through that same exercise of figuring out what was the best representation of the moment?
Carol Great question. And by the way, you’re going to find a lot of people are going to come to you wanting to write and not quite sure how to approach it, and ultimately there’s a point where the book begins to write itself. I know that sounds weird, because you can’t have all things in your book, so there are some pretty key decisions. Through many, many revisions, it landed as a complicated love story with a career, and with an older newsman who guided me through it and was so essential to my early identity. And when an editor said, there were a lot of interesting things that happened in your life, Carol, you could tell all these great little war stories, but what is your book really about? I still don’t know what your book is about. That’s where I took a scene and zoomed in. The book begins on the border of Afghanistan, I was in Pakistan on the border of Afghanistan, and there was a moment with a Taliban fighter who was aiming at us with his rocket-propelled grenade launcher. Now that sounds like a very classic war story of a journalist, but it became a metaphor for what it felt like to be seen, to be held in the gaze of others, to be judged, to be in the crosshairs. And that metaphor carries through the book, whether it’s in my personal relationship with the man who became my first husband, or the career where judgment was always raining down on me. And ultimately, at the end, how I found my way out, and it wasn’t because I had a baby, that’s so important, I don’t want this to be a feminist or an anti-feminist book, but the decision to show the arc of what it took to become a mother, because I was not a natural mother. There were people in the CNN newsroom who literally told me they feared for my unborn baby.
Angie The thing that would not fly in HR today.
Carol So true, so many things in this book would not fly by HR. But to answer your question, I think it begins with asking myself, what is the book that I want to write, and who am I writing this for? It’s not for a mass audience, ultimately it was for my daughter, who’s now 22, and who is living under the gaze of the very systems and people that I understand, what that feels like for a young woman, for men to be the judge, for a changing business environment to say you can be replaced by AI. And I wanted her to know, let’s begin with this idea that you don’t have to be perfect, you just have to be authentic. And to be authentic, as much as you look up to me, I need you to know where I broke and how I came back, and no matter what happens in your life, how you can too. So I wrote this for one person, and because I was very clear about that from the start, I wanted her to know who her biological father was, and how we met, and how both of us were very fallible, and what a career can do to a marriage and a family, and what a career can do for a marriage and a family. And I think that’s what shaped the book.
Angie Oh, this is, yes. There’s that idea that everybody has a book in them, but only about 5% of people will actually write it, and it’s interesting to see people come out of the woodwork wanting to write the book. I will totally help you tease out the story, y’all, that’s my jam. But what’s interesting is you have to know who it’s for, and what’s the cover, which is something I struggled with, because I went through iteration after iteration on a manuscript. I’d been working on this book in some form for at least three and a half years, and I could take this angle or that angle, but I could never find the backbone of it, until I finally realized I wanted to tie it to this idea of no more Sunday Scaries, and that if you live a more purposeful, values-aligned life, that’s how it will be. And what I have to say is, you wrote that with one person in mind, but we know it will have a ripple effect to many other women, not just her age, but people out there struggling with similar things. And that’s what’s beautiful, we all have something to give to the world, and the impact varies in scale, but I like to think that even if one person’s life has changed because of the purpose I put out in the world, then I guess I did my job. So there you go, even if that book is for one person, job well done.
Carol Yes. And we talk about book titles, right? I really relate to the name of your podcast, because every day is Monday when it comes to breaking news, there’s no Saturday or Sunday, but this idea of scary Sunday, I do remember the latter part of my career, Sunday nights, it was just this dread of, what is tomorrow going to bring? Which is another red flag, when that becomes a regular thing. So that’s why I really relate to your titling. And when people read my book, When News Breaks, they think initially, oh, this is about a life of breaking news, a traditional journalist story. There are far more famous journalists writing memoirs than I, but the book that only I can write is this one, because it’s really about this backdrop of a career, but it’s a very personal story of what happens when news breaks in all of our lives. And to understand that it doesn’t matter how enriched your career is, it’s your inner, truest self that is going to have to rise to the occasion, and it can happen under the most impossible circumstances, which is the value of nonfiction and memoir. So I just love this idea of finding beauty in the break, it’s how I’m signing my pre-order copies, because I really want that to be the takeaway.
Angie Love it. And you even said that through that break, you re-found a sense of purpose, and I have found that to be very true. In the entrepreneurial world, most of us talk about the fact that we had a rock bottom, and it was only that rock bottom that could have ever revealed a true purpose. And some of us try to set out to help others skip that step, but ultimately, a lot of times we kind of need that perspective. So in an effort to help somebody out there skip the step, I would love for you to speak into anybody who feels like they’re in that reckoning, going through some form of grief, whether it’s job loss, divorce, illness, or the misalignment where the signs are showing and they’re not really willing to admit it or do something about it. What would you tell somebody who is maybe in that middle right now?
Carol That you are more than that broken moment, that you are far more than your greatest disappointment. And the only way you’re going to discover that is if you walk the walk, if you allow yourself to grieve, to recognize what has happened, and to commit to moving on, and to really believe, even when you don’t believe it, that you have a capacity greater than you can possibly imagine. And the only way you’re going to know that is to just do it, one foot in front of the other, it is so literal. And I get excited when I say this, because again, I wouldn’t wish that tragedy, that loss, on anyone, but it’s exciting what comes out of it, and I swear you are going to surprise yourself. You’re going to feel a sense of pride and purpose that’s going to carry you through the rest of your career and your life, and it’s going to be the gift that you give to someone else, and when you do, it’s going to be so awesome.
Angie You can make your mess your message, if you let it. For the love of tacos, just go for it. Carol, this has been so fantastic, I want to have ten more episodes with you. I appreciate you being willing to share your story, but the heart within it, and the level of vulnerability, I know is going to help people out there, and I just thank you for being here and talking with us today.
Carol I will be there for you in your launch, January 2026, anyway.
Angie I love finding the launch friends. Speaking of, where does everybody get this gorgeous cover and find out more about this book that is basically launching right now?
Carol Available everywhere books are sold. I love to support independent bookstores, but it’s on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and if you go to an independent bookstore, just ask for it.
Angie Support Carol. We love authors who are willing to share the gritty stories that got them to where they are today, and the purpose that helped them find it. So we will put links to this in the show notes and here on LinkedIn for those of you watching. Be sure to grab your copy and support Carol’s launch, because we’re in the thick of it right now, we want her to go be at the top of the rankings and get all the stars and all the best-seller types of things. It is so fun to join the author community and cheer each other on. Carol, thank you again for being here today. And everybody out there, I want you to know you never know what blessings will come from the things that seem like setbacks or bad circumstances, life can happen for you instead of to you, if you choose to look at it that way. And I appreciate Carol for reminding us of that fact. So many exciting things are coming over the next several episodes, so you better tune in, y’all, because you never know what we’re going to throw at you. Don’t forget to share it if you loved it, get Carol’s book, drop us a review, and hop on to scarygoodread.com/waitlist so you can be the first to grab Scary Good: Discovering Life Beyond the Sunday Scaries. And in the meantime, I will see you next week for another incredible episode of No More Mondays.
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