Hoda Kotb gets candid about her personal life in her new book, Jump and Find Joy, including sharing how she discusses adoption with her two daughters.

“I think for my kids, they were asking me, I was telling them about adoption. And I thought, ‘How do you tell that story to your kids?’” Kotb shared while talking about her book on the Tuesday, September 23, episode of Today With Jenna & Friends. “And I said at first, ‘You weren’t born in my tummy, you were born in my heart,’ and they were like, ‘Oh, OK.’”

Hoda Kotb and daughters Hope and Haley, Instagram, September 2, 2025.

As Haley, 8, and Hope, 6, grew up, Kotb realized she would “have to tell them every child comes from a tummy.” She added, “So, I go, ‘Well, actually, you came from another person’s tummy, and so did you. She’s like your birth mother angel, and she’s there. God gave her the job to carry you so that she could give you to me. That was her job.’ And then they said, ‘Our birth mother angel?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ [They asked,] ‘Is she alive?’ [I said,] ‘Yeah, somewhere out there, we don’t know who that is yet.’”

Kotb continued, “We’re framing things for kids. I told that story in there because jumping into motherhood, jumping out of a relationship, into a job, out of a job, all of the things, and there are really cool people who have jumped in this book.”

Kotb shares her daughters with her ex-fiancé, Joel Schiffman. The exes became parents with the adoption of Haley in 2017, followed by Hope in 2019. Kotb and Schiffman began dating in 2013 and got engaged in 2019. Kotb announced that the two had split during a January 2022 episode of Today.

Kotb opened up about the pair’s coparenting relationship in an interview with Today.com published on Tuesday, sharing, “I think we’ve always been connected and will always be connected for many reasons.”

She continued, “We will co-parent in a beautiful way, but I also think our ‘us’ is more of a, like, we’re dear friends now. And that’s beautiful, and it’s enjoyable, and it feels right. We were laughing the other day just in hysterics, and I feel like this is the right relationship for us to have.”

As for how she and Schiffman address coparenting with their daughters? “You just have to be honest about it,” Kotb said. “Kids catch pretending. They know that Joel and I care so much for each other, and they also know that we love them dearly. And I think it’s about carving out time. It’s not his time, my time. It’s our time. That’s how we do it.”

Meet Today's Hoda Kotb's two daughters Haley and Hope, who she shares with ex Joel Schiffman | HELLO!

Kotb shared that a typical weekend for herself and Schiffman involved him coming over for a barbecue and returning the next morning to spend more time with their girls. “I think they understand your vibe,” she told Today.com. “I really adore Joel, and they know it. I’m not pretending, I’m not faking it. So, once they see that, they go, ‘Ah, OK. This is good. This is good for us.’”