Add Movieguide® as preferred on Google
By Movieguide® Staff
Kathie Lee Gifford opened up about the chronic pain she experienced following multiple surgeries and how she overcame it.
“I’ve had emotional pain many times in my life but never this kind of chronic physical pain where you literally…want to go home to Jesus,” she told PEOPLE in an Instagram video posted to the outlet’s account.
A year ago, Gifford underwent hip replacement surgery, then recovered from two different broken bones, then underwent an operation to remove cataracts.
“I feel like Mr. Potato Head! One thing falls off and then another,” she told PEOPLE. “But you have to have a sense of humor about everything. Thank God I’ve never lost that, even in my bleakest moments. I’m a tough broad.”
Gifford fell into a depression while recovering from her injuries, in large part due to the fact that she couldn’t play with her grandchildren while healing her broken bones.
Related: Kathie Lee Gifford Has Always ‘Had a Boldness’ About Her Faith
“I couldn’t carry them, I couldn’t love on them, I couldn’t run and play with them. All I could do was sit there and sing and write silly songs with them,” she said of her grandchildren — Frank, 4, Finn, 3, Ford, 2, Faith, 10 months, and Rosie, 13 months.
Now that she’s recovered and undergoing six-days-a-week physical therapy, Gifford is running “all over the place” with her grandchildren.
“They’re all fantastic,” she shared. “I’m hoping, Lord willing, that I have many, many years with them.”
Gifford isn’t just focused on being a grandma. She also told PEOPLE she wants “to do new things [and] write new things,” which she finds “great joy in.”
Recently, Gifford “finished [her] 37th book,” she told PEOPLE in an interview earlier this month.
“These are thrillers,” Gifford said of her books, including the recently published Nero & Paul. “These are epic, epic stories, but in the Bible, they’re like black and white tales, with no room for the details.”
She continued, “I’m an entertainer at heart, a filmmaker and a songwriter, so imagining the details is what I do. So this is a fun project for me. I learned so much. I love learning new things. I want to learn something new every day.”
“These books are all coming out of the same desire I had as a child, which was to let people know how much God loves them,” Gifford said, adding, “I never separated my secular and spiritual life. It’s one life, and I’ve always been the exact same person. I’ve always had an innate understanding that this life is not random, and someone created all this beauty, and someone created me.”
Gifford has gone through some tough times, both emotionally and physically, but her faith and her family have always helped her weather life’s ups and downs.
Read Next: How Kathie Lee Gifford Found Hope During a Time of Despair
Questions or comments? Please write to us here.
Add Movieguide® as preferred on GoogleShare:
- Content: +1
- Content: +2
- Content: +3
- Content: +1