Ginger Zee opens up about battle with depression

ABC News chief meteorologist Ginger Zee is opening up about her struggles with depression in a new memoir that she hopes “will help demystify depression.”

Zee, 36, who rose to fame for her fearless coverage of severe weather and natural disasters on “Good Morning America,” revealed in the book that just weeks before she began working at ABC News in 2011, she checked herself into a mental health hospital to seek treatment. In the book, titled “Natural Disaster: I Cover Them. I am One,” she openly addresses many aspects of her personal life — including being involved in an emotionally abusive relationship and her battle with depression — giving readers a rare glimpse of aspects of her life not shown on TV.

“My career was always going up. I was so lucky and fortunate in times where I had made bad choices that my career was still on the upswing,” Zee explained. “At home, my personal life was regularly falling apart and from childhood on. I had a lot of chaos and I was addicted to chaos. I was addicted to self-harm, and I had to seek help at the hospital.”

Now happily married to her husband, Ben Aaron, with whom she has a son, Adrian, and a second baby on the way, Zee writes about the darkest days of her life, including how she even attempted suicide years ago.

“I had a disease. I will always have that disease. It’s not something that just magically goes away,” Zee said. “But I sought help and I actually committed to getting help. Just like anybody with cancer, or any other disease, they go to the hospital and that’s OK. And you’re allowed to do that. We should all be allowed to be who we are, even though that happens to be the disease we fight.”

By telling her story honestly, Zee writes, that she wants to “bring hope” to others who have gone through similar experiences and help them “know they are not alone.”

“I fought a disease called depression that a lot of people fight every single day,” she added. “Unlike other diseases, there is a stigma surrounding it and I want to help people. The hundreds of thousands or millions of people who are dealing with or dealt with something I did, I want them to be able to fight without shame.”

Zee said that although she is messy in real life, her memoir “goes well beyond me being messy.”

“It’s choices I’ve made, it’s some of the life developments I’ve had, it’s some of the struggles I’ve been through and what I’ve learned in the short time in life I’ve had so far,” she said. “It dives into that while I’m covering the world’s biggest natural disasters.”

Source: ABC News

Image: Ginger Zee