CNN’s Brianna Keilar Pens Heartbreaking Essay on Loss During an Election Season

This morning, a new essay and video were uploaded to CNN’s “Girls on the Bus” series, which profiles the women covering the 2016 election and gives insight into what it’s like for them to break barriers and maintain persona lives during such a historic campaign. The latest content is from senior political correspondent Brianna Keilar, who is known for asking tough questions and, of course, telling Michael Cohen that “the polls…all of them” showed Donald Trump getting trounced by Hillary Clinton in the general election.

What she wrote and spoke about for the series, though, wasn’t just her hardest-hitting questions or the funny moments on the campaign trail. She wrote about the loss of her mother, who was diagnosed with leukemia during the primaries and died less than a day later. Watch:

Today, Keilar retweeted CNN political reporter Sara Murray, who shared the piece with the caption, “Sometimes this campaign feels like your whole life. This piece is a heart-wrenching reminder that it’s not.” True to

that idea, Keilar’s video profile included shots of her getting ready for her wedding, which she says she is planning to have in Las Vegas because she knew she’d be spending a lot of time in Nevada for campaign coverage. She laughingly called that her “work-life balance.”

In spite of the moments of levity in the clip, the essay she wrote to supplement the video is still a tear-jerker. She shared texts from her mother and described her like this:

My mom is my 3 a.m. phone call, my annual road trip buddy, the connective tissue between my father, sister and me — and one of the funniest people I know. She wrote letters to me in college from the perspective of the family cat. During the election she sent me text messages in the rhetorical stylings of the various candidates.

The whole thing is worth a read, so click here to see it.

[image via screengrab]

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