SHORELINE — Between 2011 and 2016, Erin Logan was welcomed into people’s homes.
With her perfectly styled hair, flawlessly applied makeup and her signature jewelry filling the screen, she appeared confident as she delivered the news on WTNH and FOX61.
But, underneath it all, Logan was filled with self-doubt, low self-esteem, anxiety and depression.
Logan, 43, has been on a journey to find herself and what makes her happy since 2015. And, in 2020, in the midst of COVID, Logan finally wrote the book she has been wanting to write for years, a memoir, “Reporting Facts and Running from the Truth,” Page Publishing.
The 118-page paperback highlights hard lessons she learned over the course of her career — the importance of learning from mistakes, the power of forgiveness, living in the present and distancing yourself from negative situations or people.
Logan will be signing copies of her book on Thursday, May 19 at Barnes & Noble, 1375 Boston Post Road, Milford, from 4 – 7 pm
The book cover includes three small photos that all tell a story — one of Logan anchoring, one reporting and a police mug shot, with mascara running down her face with the information, “Logan, Erin St. Joseph County Jail.”
These photos tell the story of Logan’s journey—the good, the bad, and the ugly.
“The whole idea of the book is to let, especially young women, but also adult women [know], if you don’t love yourself, if you don’t believe in yourself, who the heck is going to?” said Logan, taking a break from her many current gigs of her.
“I had all the tools in the toolbox,” she said. “The good family, the good friends, the intelligence, the drive and I let it all kind of blow up.”
Logan’s father, Don Logan, co-wrote the book and in its introduction, Erin Logan, talks about his contribution.
“I wish I could go back to my old email accounts and share some of the emails he’s sent me from 2008 until now,” she writes.
“For 12 years, he’s been sending every motivational quote, story and words of advice to keep me from doing what he says is ‘taking a hammer and hitting yourself over your head’ and from repeating some of the same mistakes,” she continues in the book.
Connecticut-based life coach, Wendy Perrotti, has been working with Logan since 2015.
“She’s someone who, even when things have been dark in her life over and over again, has always seen the possibility in turning it around and has been completely willing to dive in and do that work to turn her own life around,” said Perrotti .
Logan is steadfast that she never wanted to harm herself, even after being arrested for disorderly conduct, public intoxication and resisting arrest; two failed engagements and tears; and lots of tears over her low self-esteem and self-worth of her.
But she had some very low moments.
In the book, she makes the admission, however, that in August 2015, when news broke about a reporter and a cameraman being fatally shot, live on air, in Roanoke, Va. she said she wished that was her fate.
“I said, ‘Why couldn’t that have been me,’” she recalled. “That’s when I knew I had to do something.”
“I would never do anything like that,” she stressed. “I never hurt myself. I love my parents and I would never do that. But I thought, ‘Wow, that would have been an easy way out. Somebody just comes and shoots me.”
Yet this didn’t derail her professional aspirations.
“I thought going to New York City would make me feel so much better,” she said.
“All I did was work,” she said. “I did not have one minute to breathe, not one second. I had no time for anything.”
While Logan admits that a TV job in New York City is what many in the business aspire to, she never found happiness in that job or the life she was living and after about a year she moved to a station in Cleveland, Ohio, she said .
To fully understand Logan, it’s important to go back in time and look at the one experience that was the tipping point for her.
In chapter one, “You’re Your Own Worst Enemy” she described getting arrested while an anchor at WNDU-TV in South Bend, (IN). She was visiting her boyfriend of her, a former NFL football player and Notre Dame alumni and, two weeks before her contract with her at the station expired.
They were talking and drinking and Logan admitted in the book she was “way over the top emotional.”
“I called the non-emergency police line,” she wrote. “He then called 911. Why wouldn’t he? I had just called for no reason when I was the one acting like an idiot.”
“A female officer showed up and asked us to step outside,” Logan wrote. “She offered to drive me home. I was clearly in no condition to drive, nor did I make any attempt. I got in the cruiser. She never really spoke to me, and I got agitated and told her to call one of the higher-ups.”
Logan was asked to sit in the cruiser and the officer would drive her home, “I kept talking and crying, and she said she would arrest me for disorderly conduct if I didn’t stop,” she wrote. “I still didn’t listen.”
The result was an arrest for disorderly conduct, public intoxication and resisting arrest. Ultimately, the case was dismissed, but Logan recalled, “I couldn’t flippin’ let it go.”
“I googled myself a hundred times a day to read the stupid banter, all these crazy stories,” she said.
That same night Logan was fired from her anchor job. She landed on her feet with a job as a reporter/anchor at WLNE-TV in Providence on ABC.
A year later, 2011, she came to WTNH Connecticut where she stayed for four years, switching to FOX 61 News, and left after a year to work for WCBS as a reporter in New York City. Her last gig of her was at WOI / WUAB in Cleveland, which she left in November 2020.
The journalist and writer is brutally honest about her life and how she felt, even when it wasn’t pretty.
“She’s laying it all out there,” said Perrotti. “She really knows that if you sugarcoat it people wo n’t be able to see themselves in it.”
Logan is a strong advocate for women and teen girls struggling with self-esteem issues and has created REVIVE, a free series of workshops geared towards helping them.
“I want to meet these women, hear their stories, and share with them,” Logan writes in Chapter Seven.
The letters in the acronym stand for R: Respect and love yourself, E: End the cycle of unhealthy relationships, V: Vent to others, I: Identify your unique strengths, V: Verify problem behaviors, E: Express emotions effectively.
Logan is currently teaching public speaking at Boston College, curating a line of costume jewelry called Lure by Logan and thinking of the next book she plans to write.
She also has visions of settling down with the right guy.
“I have to find a partner,” she said. “I would like to get married. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t.”
“I feel like I’m going to meet someone organically and it’s just going to happen,” she said. “I do want to settle down, but I’m not going to push it.”