Becoming a Warrior
Lisa Guerrero fought like hell to make it as a sports anchor.
It was a dream come true until, according to her newly released memoir, Warrior: My Path to Being Brave, it wasn’t.
On the day she got the job, she also landed a second gig as a soap opera vixen on an Aaron Spelling daytime drama.
On weekdays, Guerrero filmed Sunset Beach. Then on weekends, she covered the latest in the sports world for a local news station.
Guerrero worked seven days a week for over a year, a routine that took its toll on her physical and mental health.
Throughout her year-long run on Monday Night Football, Guerrero endured a suffocating amount of criticism. It didn’t help that her boss was verbally abusive as well.
Social media wasn’t around yet, but the barrage of hatred from newspaper columnists and sports hosts left Guerrero severely suffering in silence.
She couldn’t eat or sleep, throwing up before football games and after interactions with her boss.
Soon after, Guerrero thought she had discovered the cause of her illness: she was pregnant.
It was during one of her final games for Monday Night Football that Guerrero suffered a miscarriage on live television.
In her mind, the obvious thing to do was call 911 at halftime and go to the emergency room. But those thoughts were overpowered by the possible ramifications she would face from her bosses if she left mid-game.
So instead, Guerrero made the devastating decision to get back to work, stuffing paper towels in her pants and buttoning up her jacket to keep her medical emergency a secret — not just from executives but also from the 40 million people watching live on TV.
It wasn’t until she got off the field and took the IFB out of her ear that the reality of what happened hit her: She lost everything.
"That season, I had lost my dignity and my confidence. I had definitely lost my career, I knew they were going to fire me," Guerrero said in an interview with The Blueprint. "And I had also lost a pregnancy."
It was at that moment that Guerrero realized she couldn’t afford to lose anything else.
‘This really isn’t funny’
Following in the footsteps of her grandfather, who kept an impressive row of journals on his mantle, Guerrero began documenting her life as a young girl.
What she wrote on those pages unwittingly served as a launchpad for Warrior.
As the idea for Warrior came to fruition, Guerrero pictured penning a memoir that would show her sense of humor, a departure from the serious journalist we see on television.
But as the book began to take shape, the series of funny essays about being in locker rooms full of millionaires, the life of a soap star, and dating sports fans took on a much different tone.
Guerrero says her memoir is really about "a woman navigating a male-dominated career in sports, and what that meant at the time."
"When I started to pull out the journals and look at the old VHS tapes, and I started to read about my experiences at the time, I realized that what I was going through was really traumatic," Guerrero said. "In some cases, people harass me – verbal abuse, sexual assault. And I thought, you know, this really isn’t funny."
Guerrero would soon find herself going undercover and fighting bad guys. No, it wasn’t another role on a soap opera — she became the Chief Investigative Correspondent for Inside Edition.
And while much has changed in the journalism industry, in large part due to the impacts of the #MeToo and #TimesUp campaigns, when it comes to leadership, little has changed.
"We need to be the decision makers, not the people who the decision makers are making decisions about," Guerrero said.
‘I learned that I deserve to have that name’
A book about courage and bravery, Warrior is a love letter to Guerrero’s younger self, and to other young women as well.
For Guerrero, writing her memoir was "less like picking a scab and more like taking an icepick to a scar."
Delving back into those journals and tapes and revisiting the indignity, trauma, and pain she experienced head-on is something Guerrero believes would make her mom proud.
"You can take your pain and turn it into power," she said.
A Chilean immigrant, Guerrero’s mother died when she was eight years old.
Even though their time together was short, Guerrero still remembers something her mother told her as a little girl.
"The last name Guerrero means warrior, and you were born to fight," her mother said.
She didn’t understand what that meant at the time, but after writing her memoir, Guerrero knows exactly what her mom meant.
"I am true to my heritage. I am living the life that I think she wanted me to live," Guerrero said. "I learned that I do deserve that name.”
Warrior: My Path to Being Brave is available now online and in local bookstores.