Erika Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk, penned an emotional Labor Day essay for The New York Times about the death of her husband, Charlie Kirk, on a college campus in Utah last year.
Kirk recalled the day after her husband was shot dead by alleged gunman Tyler Robinson on Sept. 11, 2025, in a candid New York Times Opinion piece.
She said that after his death, she "worked up the courage" to go in their shared bathroom but for months, Kirk wrote that she avoided their bedroom.
In the year since the Turning Point founder's death, Kirk has become one of the most famous women in America and one of the most notable widows in the world. Kirk drew mixed reactions after she overtook her husband's organization as CEO while furthering its mission to bring
conservatism to students on college campuses.
She has been the face of an ongoing feud with conservative media personality Candace Owens and criticized journalists and the political left after she was whisked out of the White House Correspondents Dinner following a shooting in April.
Kirk said she received advice from Second Lady Usha Vance that is still "seared into my heart."
Kirk said Vance told her, "You know when you're on an airplane with your kids, and you're going to land in 15 minutes, but the kids are going crazy, screaming, throwing things, and then the plane lands, and the kids relax, and everything is fine again? That's how it will be. Just get through the next 15 minutes."
In the essay, Kirk said she survived crashing waves of grief. "I realized that she was surviving her own little crashing waves, too," the entrepreneur wrote of a kiss from her daughter on her 4th birthday.
Kirk, who was raised Catholic, also discussed her faith and said her "husband was one of one" in the NYT piece.
"To the world, he was Charlie Kirk. But to me, he was the love of my life," Kirk wrote. "To our children, he was the center of their world." Kirk, who has been criticized in the year since her husband's death about her public behavior, addressed the dualities of her loss.
"I am learning that grieving Charlie and living life at the same time are part of the rhythm of grief. I can miss him with every part of me and still laugh with our children. I can have a broken heart and still experience joy."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Erica Kirk pens emotional essay on grief for Labor Day
