*On the Wednesday, March 31st edition of “Tamron Hall,” CNN Anchor Don Lemon joined the show to discuss healing after the tragic loss of his sister, finding love in his 50s and discussing racism with friends. Lemon also revealed for the first time on the live show that he and his fiancé are looking to start a family through adoption or surrogacy in the coming years.
Lemon on why his fiancé Tim [Malone] is the right person for him and why he thought he would never be able to marry:
“It was just the right person…I just found the right person, the person who believes in unconditional love, who believes in the challenges, going through the challenges, weathering the storms of a relationship because relationships aren’t easy and I don’t think they’re supposed to be easy. Someone who really believes in family, and I decided you know I need to lean into my life because I grew up never thinking that I’d be able to be open about who I was in love with and about my love life and my relationship. I actually grew up thinking that I would never get married, or it will just be a roommate, you know, or I could never tell my family or be honest with the public about it. And then once same sex marriage passed, I said, you know, why not, why not get married? Why not, you know, fall in love and have all the happiness that everybody else is entitled to and so that’s where I am right now. I’m just trying to be happy, and do the right thing in life and love someone and start a family.”
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Lemon on looking to start a family:
“Yes, I’m thinking about starting a family. Listen, we got to get married first. And we’re waiting for COVID to be over to do that because I just don’t think it’s a good time to get married do it during COVID. Now we want to be able to celebrate with our friends, we want to be able to celebrate safely. But yeah so we’re thinking about, do we want to adopt, do we want to go through surrogacy, how we want to do it. Tim is definitely going to have to be the one that to have the kid because he’s younger his body will bounce back.”
Lemon on his path to healing after the death of his sister:
“It wasn’t easy and even now, it’s still hard to talk about, as you know you never really get over it, you just learn to deal with it, it becomes part of your life. And, you know, the weird thing is now, Tim always says no one ever sees you go through this stuff, I’m the only one who sees it. You know sometimes, still now, I wake up in the middle of the night crying or it’ll just hit me at the wrong time. I’ll be on an airplane or I’ll be just walking around or I’ll be in the gym or sometimes I’ll be on the air, and I’ll think about my sister and pick up, you know, pull up a picture of her. She was my mentor growing up, and you as you know, moving around the country you become a sort of a gypsy right from city to city because you’re trying to get to a certain level. So you know I wasn’t as close to my family, my sister in later years as I would want to just because, meaning proximity not as close, I love them. And so I didn’t get to see them as often as I would’ve like and then there was some guilt around that I don’t know if you felt that because you, you know you miss a lot of holidays and birthdays and anniversaries because you’re away pursuing your dream.”
Lemon on realizing the he still had a lot of pain to work through following the death of his sister:
“It was so tough. I didn’t realize just how hurt I still was because I was trying to read the audio for the book, I had to stop. That was the longest day ever, trying to get through the parts where I had to read about my sister. And I just kept reliving and reliving and I just said I got to stop, I can’t do it. So if you listen to the audio of the book, you’ll hear me get emotional, and there was a lot of editing, and that that was the longest part. That helped show me how hurt I was and that how much more I had to deal with”
Tamron was later joined by Azim and Tasreen Khamisa (San Diego, CA), a father and daughter who lost their son and brother when he was murdered by 14-year-old Tony Hicks while delivering pizzas. Despite the immense tragedy and pain they were dealing with, Azim and Tasreen chose not only to forgive Tony for his actions, but to befriend him. WATCH CLIP HERE.
Azim Khamisa on how he found the strength to forgive his son’s killer:
“I think the answer is through your spirit and your soul. I think it’d be very difficult to navigate this between your intellect and your emotion. But let me say that every father should have a joy like a daughter like Tasreen. I’m very proud and love her dearly, but I had my out of body experience after I got a call from homicide to tell them that Tariq had been shot and killed. My knee jerk reaction was they made a mistake. Mistaken Identity, of course. He had just got engaged to his girlfriend Jennifer, I called her home, and she picked up the phone and she couldn’t say anything. She was sobbing. I was in my kitchen. I lost strength in both my legs, I fell to the floor, put my head against the refrigerator curled up in a ball and the pain was so excruciating. I believe in God, I grew up as a Sufi Muslim. I started to meditate when I was 20, I lost Tariq in my early 40s. And I left my body because the pain was so excruciating, I couldn’t be in my body. I believe I went in loving arms of God. It’s like a nuclear bomb had exploded in my heart. And when the explosion subsided I came back to my body with wisdom. That there are victims at both ends of the gun. It didn’t come from my intellect or emotion because it is very difficult for us mortals to do that. But it was a download from our higher power, and that eventually led me to forgive Tony.”
Also on today’s show, Mark Henick (Toronto, Canada) was just 15 years old when he almost ended his life by jumping off a bridge, but was saved by a stranger, Mike Richey (Halifax, Nova Scotia). Mark tried to find the “man in the light brown jacket” that saved his life and after doing a TedX Talk on the experience, Mark and Mike found their way back to one another. WATCH CLIP HERE.
Mike Richey on discovering Mark’s TED Talk and the emotions he felt watching it:
“A friend of mine, he was actually my roommate at the time of the incident with Mark on the bridge, so he was well aware of the story. So when he had seen the video, he sent me a link to it and said I think this guy’s talking about you. So I had ducked away at work, I work in a busy place so I just went to the washroom to kind of get some privacy to check out the video. And as I was watching it, I’m watching this adult recounting everything that myself and this teenage boy went through on the bridge that night, you know, years prior. And then seeing him, what he’s doing with his life, you know I always wondered if he was okay, if he ever went back and finished what he tried to do on the bridge that night, and that weighed on me for years because I never knew what happened to him. So seeing him not only okay but successful and doing these great things with his life, it was incredibly emotional. I broke down. So it took me a bit to get myself together and finish my shift that night.”
Following are highlights for Tamron Hall for the remainder of the week. Please note: lineup is subject to change.
Thursday, April 1: Just days after his release from prison after being pardoned, an exclusive interview with Matthew Rushin, a young man with autism who was serving 10 years after being involved in two car crashes. His mom Lavern – who has been advocating to free her son for over a year – also joins the conversation. Plus, a filmmaker who documented the quest for his father’s return after being kidnapped by guerrilla fighters in Columbia 25 years ago.
Friday, April 2: A candid conversation with women on how they choose to age. Guests include supermodels Paulina Porizkova and Christie Brinkley; writer, director, and producer Justine Bateman; and women from all walks of life who are unapologetically choosing to face aging in different ways.
source: Bergen Onufer – [email protected]
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