HODA KOTB ' MY DAUGHTER IS SO RESILIENT '

A YEAR AFTER HER DAUGHTER HOPE'S TERRIFYING MEDICAL CRISIS, THE TODAY ANCHOR OPENS UP ABOUT THE 4-YEAR-OLD'S 'INCREDIBLE BRAVERY' AND HOW THEY'RE FINDING A NEW NORMAL

- CHARLOTTE TRIGGS

Just over a year ago Hoda Kotb sat down to write Hope Is a Rainbow, a children’s book dedicated to her younger daughter Hope, now 4. “The book was written initially because of who she is. I thought her goodness should be spread around,” says the Today show anchor, 59, who had previously written I’ve Loved You Since Forever, which celebrates adoption, in honor of her older daughter Haley, 7. Hope “is just intuitive and smart, and I’ve never seen someone who’s quite as generous,” Kotb says. “She’s the kid who gives away her last blueberry. If your toy is broken, she’ll give you her new one. She is that person.”

When Kotb first settled on the name Hope, “it defined where I was in my life when I was looking for hope. You’re like, ‘Please let this happen,’ she recalls of her 2019 second adoption. “She was the hope that I’d been looking for and wanting. Sometimes you name a child, and then they become the name.”

Over the past year that’s become all the more evident. Last February Kotb was absent from the