Erika Kirk (formerly Frantzve) faced significant challenges in coming to terms with the death of her husband, Charlie Kirk.

“For months, I couldn’t even step into my bedroom,” Erika, 37, shared during a CBS News town hall on Saturday, December 13. She explained that she had been sleeping in her 3-year-old daughter’s bed instead. “I can’t sleep, I’m on my phone, and I start typing out [a speech],” she added.

Charlie was tragically shot and killed at the age of 31 while speaking at Utah Valley University in September. He leaves behind Erika and their two young children.

Following Charlie’s assassination, Erika delivered a stark message to the shooter through Fox News, saying, “You have no idea what you have just unleashed.”

Erika Kirk has been addressing criticism regarding her public mourning process for her husband’s unexpected passing. “There is no linear blueprint for grief. One day you’re collapsed on the floor crying out the name Jesus in between labored breaths,” Erika, 36, expressed on Instagram on Saturday, October 11. “The next day…”

“That morning, the team reached out to me and said, ‘They think they got the guy. You should probably say thank you to the authorities and make a statement,’” Erika recalled to Bari Weiss on Saturday. “I said, ‘OK.’ I wasn’t afraid.”

While Erika claimed her team offered to help her pre-record a video message, she opted to speak live.

“I said, ‘Absolutely not.’ My husband always went live,” Erika said. “I have nothing to hide. We are fully transparent. What you see is what you get. If I start breaking down on live TV, I break down on live TV. My husband was assassinated, he didn’t die in a car accident.”

According to Erika, her self-written speech was the epitome of “a revival that was unleashed.”

“That’s not meant to call to violence. That’s meant for people to understand the Lord is moving in ways we have no idea,” she said. “God is going to use something so tragic to wake people up to realize, ‘Our life is short.’ [Charlie] only lived 31 years. Thirty-one years, and so, yes, you have no idea what has been unleashed.”

Erika Kirk, the widow of slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk, is opening up about the moment she saw her husband’s body after he was fatally shot. “His eyes were semi-open,” Erika, 36, told The New York Times in an interview published on Sunday, September 21, her first since her husband was shot and killed on […]

Erika continued, “I promise until my last breath that I will let the Lord use me in ways he only can to bring glory to him and to the kingdom. It has been unbelievably powerful, and it’s just the beginning.”

Erika, who has since taken over her late husband’s Turning Point USA organization as CEO and chairperson, has continued to uphold Charlie’s legacy in the wake of his death. She has also been vocal with her daughter and son about their father’s absence.

“My daughter continues to ask [where he is], but it’s really sweet because I keep explaining to her a few things,” Erika said on Fox News last month. “I said, ‘If ever you want to talk to Daddy, you just look up to the sky and start talking to him — he can hear you.’”

During the Sunday, September 21, public memorial service for the late Charlie Kirk, his wife, Erika Kirk (née Frantzve) publicly forgave the man allegedly responsible for her husband’s death. “I forgive him because it is what Christ did,” Erika, 36, said during her husband’s service, held at the State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. “The […]

According to Erika, she subsequently told her kids that “Daddy is in heaven.”

“I told her, ‘Daddy is in heaven.’ She goes, ‘You think I could go sometime?’” Erika tearfully said at the time. “I said, ‘Baby, we will all go one day.’”

Erika later told the outlet during a separate interview that her daughter keeps asking about heaven.

“My daughter and I [have] talked about this at night,” she told Sean Hannity on Monday, December 8. “She would ask, ‘What do you think Daddy did today in heaven?’ And I’ll have her relay that back to me. We’ve come to the understanding — and I’ve tried to explain this to her — that Daddy’s still with us, he’s just in a different location, and he’s building us a home in heaven.”