ESPN's Stephen A. Smith gets candid on death of his mom, reveals therapy helped cope with 'miserable' time

ESPN personality and OutKick's Clay Travis talk about who the pundit will vote for in the 2024 presidential election.

ESPN personality Stephen A. Smith talked openly about his mother in a recent interview and praised her for the major impact she made on his life and discussed how it affected him when she died in 2017.

Smith talked to OutKick’s Clay Travis about how his family struggled and it helped him learn how to survive and the value of a dollar. He said he looked at his mother with more respect when he learned he was making more than her working at a newspaper than she did raising him and his siblings.

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Nov 24, 2023; New York, New York, USA; Sports broadcaster Stephen A. Smith sits court side during the third quarter between the New York Knicks and the Miami Heat at Madison Square Garden. (Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports)

"We struggled tremendously," Smith said. "We knew how to do without. We knew how to survive but we certainly knew that we were poor … No question about it, we were deprived of a lot of things because of our circumstances. But the respect and admiration for her just elevated amongst all of us because in order to be able to take care of us, there had to be such an incomparable level of selflessness where it was about us and it wasn’t about her.

"She’s the reason that I always came up with a slogan when it came to me and my two daughters and this is if they’re hungry, it’s because I’m starving. I’m not comfortable unless they’re comfortable. I don’t eat unless I know they eat. I’m not living comfortably unless I know they’re OK. They are first. I got that from mom because mom was that way and she mandated that her children be that way as well. And