Ginger Zee abused pills in an attempt at suicide because of her depression and checked herself into a mental hospital 10 days before she landed her dream job at ABC News, she writes in her new memoir which comes out on December 5.
The revelations were made in her new book, Natural Disaster: I Cover Them. I Am One, which is published by Kingswell.
Zee, who was born Ginger Zuidgeest, is the chief meteorologist for ABC News. She is the first ever female chief meteorologist for a major US television network.
In 2013, she was named chief meteorologist for Good Morning America, replacing Sam Champion.
Champion departed for another gig at The Weather Channel.
Ginger Zee abused pills in an attempt at suicide because of her depression and checked herself into a mental hospital 10 days before she landed her dream job at ABC News, she writes in her new memoir
Zee, who was born Ginger Zuidgeest, is the chief meteorologist for ABC News. She is the first ever female chief meteorologist for a major US television network. In 2013, she was named chief meteorologist for Good Morning America, replacing Sam Champion
For Zee, however, the road to the top was hardly smooth sailing.
In an excerpt published by the New York Daily News on Saturday, Zee reveals in her memoir that she survived a relationship with an abusive boyfriend.
The relationship with the man, whom her mother referred to as a ‘monster’, was so volatile that during a getaway vacation she had to hide underneath the table on a different floor of a remote lodge.
The man would often call her names and scroll through her text messages. He also isolated her and cut her off from her friends and family.
The boyfriend would alternate between being cruel and charming, according to Zee.
Zee reveals that she retaliated by cheating on him with her ex-boyfriend.
She writes that she essentially lived contradictory lives – on the one hand, she was ambitious in her career pursuits. But on the other, she lived in fear of her boyfriend.
‘[There was] the successful, happy-go-lucky ‘wake up and watch Ginger Zee’ side and the dark, despondent, tortured and introverted Ginger Zuidgeest,’ she writes.
Zee also reveals that she twice backed out of an engagement with the same fiancée.
Six weeks before her wedding, Zee ran over to a post office and convinced a mailman to allow her to retrieve wedding invitations she had just mailed out.
The second time she backed out came after all of the catering arrangements had been made and people flew in from out of town for the wedding.
The revelations were made in her new book, Natural Disaster: I Cover Them. I Am One, which is published by Kingswell. It is due for release on December 5
Zee also writes that she began dating her best friend, who turned out to be gay.
She writes that she knew from an early age that she wanted to be a meteorologist. It was a dream fuelled by her fascination with extreme weather.
‘We would hear my mom start freaking out. (She always loses her minds in storms, which is pretty ironic given that she gave birth to me. Her threshold for a freak-out is about a twenty-mile-per-hour gust, and then she yells, ‘Everyone down in the basement!’ at the top of her lungs.)
‘I loved watching the base of those thunderstorms, the billowing tops of the cumulonimbus, the lightning that effortlessly lit up the lake and the sky.
‘It was gorgeous, so energetic. I was in love.’
Zee worked at a number of small television stations before she landed her big break at ABC News.
In May of last year, she surprised fans when she revealed on Dancing With the Stars that she battled an eating disorder as a teenager.
‘Anorexia is a lot about lying to yourself. I lied to myself constantly and that [lasted] not just that four or five really bad years, but then for the next 15 years, and I feel like this one of the first times in my life I’m being honest with everybody and myself,’ the 36-year-old confessed.
She shared even more details about her struggle on GMA, admitting that it took her years of therapy to love her body and have a normal relationship with food.