Erika Kirk, widow of assassinated conservative activist Charlie Kirk, opened up about the crushing grief she has carried since her husband’s murder, revealing in a new op-ed that it was second lady Usha Vance who gave her the advice that got her through the darkest hours.
Charlie Kirk, the 31-year-old founder of Turning Point USA, was shot in the neck while addressing students at Utah Valley University on September 10, 2025. The killing was captured on video and spread rapidly across the internet, shocking the nation.
In an essay published Monday in The New York Times, the 37-year-old mother of two described the disorienting days that followed. She recalled landing in Phoenix from Utah and being met by her children, who had no idea what their mother had just been through. “They care only that I am home,” she wrote.
It was the day after the shooting that Erika Kirk found herself sitting on the couch where her husband had watched the Cubs with their kids just two nights before, overwhelmed by a wave of emotion she didn’t yet recognize as grief. She told Usha Vance she didn’t know how she was going to get through it.
Vance responded with an analogy about flying with young children: when a plane is minutes from landing and kids are melting down, everything eventually settles once the plane touches the ground. Her advice, boiled down, was simple — just get through the next 15 minutes. Kirk wrote that those words are now “seared” into her heart.
The op-ed continues with Kirk describing sleepless nights, the ache of celebrating birthdays and holidays without her husband, and even small, mundane reminders of him, like his towel still hanging in their bathroom.
She said the grief hits differently now than it did a year ago. Where she once feared being swallowed by it, she has come to recognize the wave when it arrives — and at times even welcomes it, because for a brief moment it makes her husband feel close again.
Kirk closed her essay with a message to others walking through loss. She wrote that she wouldn’t promise anyone that tomorrow will be easier than today, but she would pass along what a dear friend told her: just get through the next 15 minutes.
Charlie Kirk’s assassination has fueled a wave of conspiracy theories in the year since his death, and it has thrust his widow into an unrelenting public spotlight as she has stepped forward to lead his organization and share her grief publicly. Her essay marks one of her most personal public reflections yet on the loss of her husband and the support she has leaned on to survive it, including from the second lady herself.
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