Marketing executive Bozoma Saint John never saw herself as the type to air her personal troubles out at the office. Then she got the call that her husband Peter Saint John was dying. In that moment back in 2013, as her mother-in-law instructed her to come to the hospital, she wasn't aware of the specifics—namely, that doctors had told her partner of more than a decade his cancer was terminal —just that he'd received some news.
"I didn't know what in the hell she was going to say," Bozoma shared in her exclusive interview with E! News, "but I knew it wasn't going to be good." In a daze, PepsiCo's then-head of music and entertainment marketing walked into a colleague's office. "Under normal circumstances," the mom of 14-year-old Lael continued, she would never .
"You feel like you're oversharing, because TMI. But it just felt like there was no option. I really hit the bottom.
" Thankfully, her coworker offered a necessary lift. "He was empathetic. He was nurturing.
And he was kind and encouraging," said Bozoma, sharing that since that day she's vowed to live her life out loud, being honest about everything from very intense personal struggles to the fact that, no, she cannot make a 9 p.m. meeting with associates in Hong Kong "because I've got to actually be present for my kid.
" It's just one of the lessons the newest star of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills is offering in her 2023 book, The Urgent Life: My Story of Love, Loss, and Survival , detailing the wisdom she took.
