US TV host Savannah Guthrie is set to return to NBC's Today show on 6 April after a nearly two-month absence following the disappearance of her 84-year-old mother.
Guthrie said in an interview with former co-host Hoda Kotb that returning to the programme would not be easy, but that she wanted to try.
"I can't come back and try to be something that I’m not. But I can’t not come back, because it’s my family," she said.
"I think it’s part of my purpose right now. I want to smile and when I do, it will be real and my joy will be my protest. My joy will be my answer. And being there is joyful and when it’s not, I’ll say so."
Nancy Guthrie was reported missing on 1 February after disappearing from her home in Tucson, Arizona.
Authorities believe she was kidnapped, abducted or otherwise taken against her will.
The FBI released surveillance footage of a masked man outside her front door on the night she vanished, while the Guthrie family has offered a $1 million reward for information leading to her recovery.
In another part of the interview, Guthrie said she and her siblings quickly realised their mother’s disappearance was not a case of someone simply wandering off.
She said doors at the house had been propped open, blood was found on the front doorstep and a camera had been pulled away.
Guthrie said her brother immediately feared their mother had been kidnapped for ransom.
The Today co-anchor said the family did not know whether she had been targeted because of her public profile, but admitted that possibility was "too much to bear".
While she said some purported ransom notes were fake, Guthrie said she believed two that she and her siblings responded to were real.
She described the circumstances as "surreal".
"Somebody knows something," she said.
"And maybe somebody’s afraid and I understand that, but our hearts are in agony. We can’t breathe. We can’t live. We can’t go on. We can’t be in peace. We can’t go forward. We have to know what happened to her."
Source: AP
