Whoopi Goldberg has revealed that she once “flirted” with the idea of suicide in the wake of her mother and brother’s deaths.
The View‘s longtime moderator opened up about her grief while promoting her new memoir Bits and Pieces: My Mother, My Brother, and Me on the latest episode of Anderson Cooper‘s All Is There podcast.
Goldberg’s mother Emma Johnson died in 2010 from a stroke, while her brother Clyde Johnson died in 2015 from a brain aneurysm. The star’s memoir focuses on her relationships with her late family members, whom she calls her “home base” and “reality check.”
“I’m not in any rush to go where they went but a lot of days I’m just sort of walking through it, getting where I need to go and doing what I need to do,” Goldberg writes in her new book. “I had no clue that things would change so dramatically for me once they were gone.”
Cooper became emotional as he read the passage aloud, noting that Goldberg occasionally felt like asking, “Why did y’all leave me here?” But Goldberg chimed in to answer her own question.
“The answer to that is: ‘cause we have stuff we have to get done. That’s why,” she said. “This is not our time. It’s not our time. We got kids and grandkids and they need to know us.”
The EGOT recipient then candidly admitted that she “once flirted with thinking about leaving” — but the thought of her daughter Alex Martin snapped her out of it.
“I thought what a terrible thing that would be to do to my kid — to knowingly do to my kid, who actually likes me,” Goldberg told Cooper. “She’s a really good person and a fine woman and she and her husband have raised three fine, very bizarre children. Why would you leave them with that? So I decided not to.”
If you or someone you know are experiencing suicidal thoughts, call the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at 988.
