Amanda Kloots Reveals Why She Stopped Going to Church After Nick Cordero’s Death
In the premiere episode of Dr. Zelana On Being Human, Amanda Kloots opens up about losing husband Nick Cordero, questioning God and finding her way back to church.
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Amanda Kloots says she never felt closer to God than during the 95 days her husband, Broadway actor Nick Cordero, spent in the hospital with COVID-19 in 2020. After he died, she couldn’t bring herself to go to church.
In the premiere episode of Dr. Zelana On Being Human, the new LA Times Studios podcast premiering October 21, the author and fitness entrepreneur opens up to host Dr. Zelana Montminy about that split. She reveals why Sunday Mass became too painful after his death and how she eventually found her way back to a church where she felt she belonged.
“Me and God and Nick”
“It was the most beautiful thing in the entire world while he was very sick in the hospital,” Kloots said. “I’ve never felt closer to my faith and never felt closer to God. And I loved that. I really felt like we were on this team together every day, like me and God and Nick, and it was just like this pack.”
Cordero died that July at 41, leaving Kloots to raise their 1-year-old son, Elvis, on her own.
“After losing him, I had a really, really hard time going to church,” Kloots said. “But that wasn’t because of necessarily my faith, it was that I love church so much. I love going to Sunday Mass. Like, it’s my favorite thing. It’s like my reset.”
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Going without Cordero changed what Mass felt like. “To then go now alone, Elvis was a baby, so I would have to manage him, and then look around and see all these other families,” she said. “It just made me feel more isolated.”
“I think when you’re grieving and you do anything that makes you really feel like this is now your new life, you’re alone, and that’s what church felt like to me,” Kloots said. “So for a while, it was really, really hard for me to go to church because of that.”
Most Sundays ended in tears. “I would just sit in church, and I would just cry. And so I would leave, and I’d be like, ‘What’s the point?’ Like, I’m just sitting at a church crying,” she said. “So I kinda had to step away from it for a minute.”
Montminy described the break as a boundary, a way for Kloots to protect herself while she worked out what church meant to her and how to return. Kloots agreed.
Hosted by behavioral scientist and bestselling author Dr. Zelana Montminy, the weekly series features candid conversations with Halle Berry, Emma Grede, Jeannie Mai, Amanda Kloots, Jefferson Fisher and other leading voices.
Finding a church again
The return took years. “That was only honestly, like, a year ago, that I finally found a church that I really love and I love going to, and that I feel comfortable going to now,” Kloots said, “and being able to sit next to other families and not get jealous of them or hate them.”
Montminy pointed to something religious communities offer people in mourning. “I think religion does a particularly good job of partnering with humans to not feel so alone because there’s ritual in place around grief, around loss,” she said. “And so they come together regardless of what you believe or don’t believe... There’s something really powerful in that, and I think human beings have forgotten how to partner together in these very real but painful experiences.”
Kloots said she had moments of anger at God while Cordero was still in the hospital. Her parents were living with her at the time, and one day she unloaded on her father about prayers that weren’t being answered.
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“I said to my dad, ‘Dad, in the Bible it says if you bring two or more people to pray, your prayers will be answered, and I’m praying for these miracles every day,’” she recalled. “I’m like, ‘I have the whole world praying... All around the world singing and praying, and nothing, there’s no miracles. He’s not getting any better.’”
Her father reads the Bible every morning and, as Kloots put it, has a secret code that he writes in for his prayers. He had a different way of seeing it.
“He sits there and he goes, ‘Amanda, you’re getting a miracle every day.’ And I was like, ‘What do you mean?’ And he was like, ‘Nick’s still alive. He’s still here,’” Kloots said. “He’s like, ‘Every day God is giving you a miracle.’”
“I was like, ‘Dang it, Dad, you’re so right,’” she said. “So yes, I did have some angry God moments, but luckily I have wonderful parents and family that put me back in check.”
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How she thinks about death now
Losing Cordero also changed her relationship with death. “I’m less afraid of it, but also because I’m a single mom, I don’t wanna die,” Kloots said. “There’s a lot of beauty in dying, and I do believe that... I think Nick is around me all the time.”
“So I think there’s a bit of, like, awesome curiosity about what we get to do when we’re on the other side,” she said. “But by no means do I wanna leave this earth any time soon.”
Listen to the full conversation with Amanda Kloots in the debut episode of Dr. Zelana On Being Human, now available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
