{"id":32897,"date":"2026-09-11T15:14:39","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T19:14:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?p=32897"},"modified":"2026-09-11T15:14:39","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T19:14:39","slug":"erika-kirk-reveals-the-advice-that-carried-her-through-first-year-without-charlie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2026\/09\/erika-kirk-reveals-the-advice-that-carried-her-through-first-year-without-charlie","title":{"rendered":"Erika Kirk Reveals the Advice That Carried Her Through First Year Without Charlie"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The White House<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One year after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, his widow, Erika Kirk, is revealing what helped her survive the moments when grief felt almost impossible to bear.<\/p>\n

The day after her husband was fatally shot at Utah Valley University, Erika returned home to Phoenix. Her children ran into her arms, but walking through the front door meant confronting a home filled with reminders of the life they had shared just days earlier.<\/p>\n

“I sit on the couch where Charlie sat two nights ago watching the Cubs with our kids,” Erika recalled in an essay<\/a> marking her first year as a widow. “I feel a wave building inside me, and I know it’s about to crash.”<\/p>\n

She didn’t know how she was going to do this.<\/p>\n

Earlier that day, Erika had said as much to second lady Usha Vance. Vance responded with an image familiar to any parent who has traveled with young children: the chaotic final 15 minutes of a flight.<\/p>\n

Children may be crying, screaming or throwing things, she explained. Everything can feel overwhelming. But eventually, the plane lands.<\/p>\n

“That’s how it will be. Just get through the next 15 minutes,” Vance told her.<\/p>\n

For Erika, those words became a lifeline.<\/p>\n

In the months that followed, grief confronted her in places that had once felt ordinary. She avoided the bedroom she had shared with Charlie, knowing that she would eventually have to face the memories waiting there, but deciding to do it gradually.<\/p>\n

Then came the firsts without him: birthdays, holidays, anniversaries and family moments that once would have included Charlie.<\/p>\n

“Grief is strange. Time continues even when every part of you wants it to pause or, better yet, rewind,” Erika wrote.<\/p>\n

When the pain became overwhelming, she returned to those 15 minutes.<\/p>\n

But surviving grief presented another challenge. At some point, Erika realized she couldn’t spend the rest of her life wishing time would move backward.<\/p>\n

“The people we love who have passed on would not want us to spend the rest of our lives trying to rewind,” she wrote. “At first, I needed to survive the next 15 minutes. Over time, I’ve realized that Charlie would want me to live them.”<\/p>\n

That has meant learning how grief and joy can exist together. Erika still aches for her husband, but she also laughs with their children and experiences moments of happiness. Sometimes, she said, even the pain of missing Charlie makes him feel close again.<\/p>\n

Through it all, Erika says her faith in God has remained intact.<\/p>\n

“Occasionally, I’m asked whether I’m angry at God. I say no,” she wrote.<\/p>\n

That does not mean she understands why her husband was taken from her.<\/p>\n

Erika acknowledged that losing someone you love can leave questions without satisfying answers. For her, faith has not meant understanding everything God allows. It has meant trusting Him even when she cannot.<\/p>\n

“I know my husband is in heaven, but I ache for him to be here,” she wrote. “Still, I can stand and say without a shadow of a doubt that God is good.”<\/p>\n

That conviction was tested publicly only days after Charlie’s death.<\/p>\n

At his memorial service, Erika stunned many watching when she publicly forgave the man accused of killing her husband, pointing directly to the example of Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n

“I forgive him because it was what Christ did, and is what Charlie would do,” she said. “The answer to hate is not hate. The answer we know from the Gospel is love, is always love.”<\/p>\n

One year later, the grief remains.<\/p>\n

“To the world, he was Charlie Kirk,” Erika wrote. “But to me, he was the love of my life. To our children, he was the center of their world.”<\/p>\n

Now, the advice that helped her make it through those first unbearable hours has become the advice she offers others facing loss: Just get through the next 15 minutes.<\/p>\n

Because eventually, those minutes may contain something you couldn’t imagine during the darkest ones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One year after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, his widow, Erika Kirk, is revealing what helped her survive the moments when grief felt almost impossible to bear. The day after her husband was fatally shot at Utah Valley University, Erika returned home to Phoenix. Her children ran into her arms, but walking through the front door meant…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":516,"featured_media":32900,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nErika Kirk Reveals the Advice That Carried Her Through First Year Without Charlie<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Erika Kirk reveals the advice that carried her through grief and strengthened her faith during her first year without Charlie.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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