Pamela Brown has been a staple on CNN since 2013, though she’s seriously seen her stock rise at the news network since the early 2020s. From being tapped to anchor key timeslots to joining “The Situation Room” as Wolf Blitzer‘s co-host, it’s safe to say that Brown has made quite the name for herself in the world of broadcast journalism. Not only that, but this sort of thing seems to be in her blood. Her mother was actually the late Phyllis George, a former CBS anchor and one-time First Lady of First Lady of Kentucky (Brown’s father was late former Kentucky Governor John Y. Brown Jr.).

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But CNN’s anchors certainly aren’t immune to personal hardship. On-air personalities like Christiane Amanpour, Laura Coates, Erin Burnett, and Jake Tapper have all had to endure tragedy to some extent or another, and their colleague Pamela Brown is no exception. For example, the death of Brown’s mother was painful enough for the second-generation journalist, never mind some of the particularly saddening circumstances surrounding it. Brown also had to contend with anxieties stemming from her own journey into motherhood, in addition to the existing stresses of her high-profile day job. Take, for example, the time she had to put on a brave face while going on air to cover a natural disaster that quite literally hit very close to home. Simply put, there’s a lot CNN viewers don’t necessarily see on camera. That in mind, Pamela Brown’s life has been particularly sad at times.

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It’s not uncommon for parents to name their children after other relatives, especially those who have passed on. Pamela Brown’s parents, John Y. Brown Jr. and Phyllis George, did just that, naming their daughter for John’s late sister, who was also named Pamela Brown. However, the death of the Kentucky governor’s sibling was incredibly tragic in and of itself. Back in 1970, more than a decade before CNN’s Pamela Brown was born, her aunt was one of three people who lost their lives in a now-infamous ballooning accident.

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The elder Pamela was just 28 years old when she boarded a Rozière balloon (that is, a hybrid balloon utilizing both hot air and helium) called the “Free Life” alongside her husband Rodney Anderson and balloonist Malcolm Brighton. The three embarked from Long Island, New York on what was supposed to be a five-day voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. But according to the Aviation Safety Network, things went terribly awry at the start of the second day. After a hot-air mechanism failed and the crew ran into inclement weather, they were forced to make an emergency landing in the ocean itself, about 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. Members of both the United Stated and Canadian militaries embarked on a search and rescue mission, but were unable to locate the crew. The search was called off after about two weeks, and Pamela, her husband, and their pilot were never seen again.

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CNN anchor Pamela Brown and her husband Adam Wright share three children: two sons and a daughter. Their two boys were born in 2018 and 2024, respectively. In the interim, Brown and Wright welcomed their baby girl in early 2020. However, it was after her daughter was born that Brown also had to contend with a bout of what she described as “severe” postpartum anxiety. The news anchor spoke openly about that challenging time in her life during a 2021 CNN report regarding then-President Joe Biden’s decision to remove 12-week paid family leave from his social program package after Senator Joe Manchin pushed back on the proposal.

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“My paid leave through work gave me the time to seek the treatment I needed, and to recover mentally before going back to my demanding job,” Brown said. “I honestly could not imagine having to deal with the stress of not having paid leave on top of everything I was going through,” she continued, adding, “How is it possible, in this day and age, the United States doesn’t make this more of a priority?” Brown also noted that while CNN gave her the leave she needed to spend time with her children and take care of her postpartum mental health, she was “one of the fortunate ones,” as many other American women don’t have that same luxury. Still, the anxiety definitely took a toll on Brown, especially since she had to face it around the same time her own mother’s health started failing.

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In May 2020, about three months after Pamela Brown welcomed her secondborn, Brown’s mother Phyllis George passed away at the age of 70 due to complications stemming from a rare form of blood cancer called polycythemia vera, which she had been diagnosed with decades prior. Saying goodbye to their mother was obviously difficult for the CNN anchor and her older brother, Lincoln Brown. But what made it even harder was the fact that all this was going on during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Though George didn’t have the virus, COVID regulations meant Pamela and Lincoln had to keep their distance from their mother during her final days.

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Pamela Brown recounted the harrowing experience in a CNN article published in December 2020. “It felt like a form of torture not being by our beloved mom’s side and having no idea what was going on. Just staring at the phone endlessly waiting for news,” she wrote, adding, “The entire time I kept thinking: Covid-19 may be invisible but I’ve never felt like I’ve ever had a bigger enemy to fight. She is my only mother in life, and how dare this virus keep me from her during this critical time?” Though Pamela and George were allowed to see their mother to say goodbye, COVID also affected the grieving process. “There would be no grieving through comforting hugs of loved ones after our loss. All our grief stayed six feet away,” she admitted.

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As previously mentioned, Pamela Brown’s father was none other than John Y. Brown Jr., who served as governor of Kentucky from 1979 to 1983, leaving office about a month after his daughter was born. Like her father, the CNN anchor was born in Lexington, Kentucky,about 40 minutes from the state capital of Frankfort. However, in 2021, Pamela Brown had to watch as her home state was ravaged by tornadoes. Rather than cover the destruction from the CNN studio in Washington D.C., Brown believed she owed it to the people of Kentucky to go out into the field and report from the city of Mayfield, which had been hit especially hard.

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“I felt it was really important to be here,” the journalist said in an interview with The Poynter Institute. “I feel a kinship with my fellow Kentuckians.” Brown added that her father, who passed away the following year, spoke highly of the people of Mayfield once she told him she was going to make the trip. “The people in this community are salt-of-the-earth, hard-working people and I wanted to be on the ground telling this story first-hand,” she said, adding, “When you are here, you feel the story. … Some of these people cleaning up the debris have been at it for 48 hours. I talked with a man who rode out the storm praying in his bathtub. These are the people I grew up with in Kentucky.”

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