Erika Kirk Reveals the Key Advice on Grief She Got From Usha Vance in NYT Op-Ed

Erika Kirk (AP Photo/Marielle Scott, File); Usha Vance, inset (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)

Charlie Kirk’s widow got a crucial piece of advice in the wake of his assassination — from none other than second lady Usha Vance.

The conservative podcaster and Turning Point USA founder was shot in the neck while speaking to students at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10, 2025. He was 31, and the murder was caught on video that instantly tore through the internet.

Erika Kirk, 37, the mother of Charlie Kirk’s two young children, described her crippling grief in an op-ed in The New York Times that was published on Monday.

As the reality of the tragedy set in, Erika Kirk encountered Vance, 40, the next day:

The past 24 hours feel like a fever dream as I land in Phoenix from Utah and return home. I get out of the car, and my kids run into my arms. They have no idea where I was or what I was doing. They care only that I am home.

As I walk to the front door, there’s a tightening in my chest I don’t recognize. Is this what grief feels like? I sit on the couch where Charlie sat two nights ago watching the Cubs with our kids. I feel a wave building inside me, and I know it’s about to crash.

“I don’t know how I’m going to do this,” I told the second lady, Usha Vance, earlier that day.

As she held my hand, she said: “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.”

Her words are seared into my heart.

The widow goes on to describe sleepless nights, celebrating their kids birthdays and holidays without her husband, and even the mundane, like his towel hanging on a hook in their bathroom.

“The wave still comes, but it’s different now. A year ago, when I felt it coming over me, I wondered whether it would swallow me completely. Now, I recognize it; sometimes I even welcome it, because for a moment the grief makes Charlie feel impossibly close,” Erika Kirk wrote.

“If you are living through grief, I won’t tell you what to feel or that tomorrow will be better than today. I will tell you what a dear friend told me: Just get through the next 15 minutes.”

Charlie Kirk’s death has inspired countless conspiracy theories and put Erika Kirk squarely in the spotlight.

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