It takes a special type of person to willingly walk towards the most dangerous conflicts in the world to ensure they’re seen and understood by the rest of us.
But when our next guest smoked a joint as a teen, she had an epiphany: She was "a vessel", "a communicator"... she was also admittedly "high as a kite", but she was right.
It would lead Clarissa Ward down a lifelong path as a world-renowned war journalist, reporting from the frontlines of Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Kabul and more recently Ukraine.
Ward is CNN’s chief international correspondent, she’s facing a new challenge - covering a war while pregnant with her third child.
Speaking with Tova O'Brien on Tuesday morning, Ward said the horrors she has witnessed as a war journalist are not something that can really be compartmentalised, saying the trauma always catches up to you and 'you will feel it'.
"You're never going to get away with doing this kind of work for years or decades in my case, and not have to reckon with all that trauma that you've been exposed to or other people's trauma that you've been exposed to," Ward said.
"It is important, I think, that we talk a lot more in the industry about the real toll that it takes and that we all play a part in being really proactive about self-care and trying to support our colleagues and being proactive about their self-care as well.
"We are finally having those conversations a lot more and a lot more openly in newsrooms as well, which is a very good thing."
In Ukraine, Ward was the only reporter who witnessed the repatriation of US man Joshua Jones, who died alongside New Zealander, Dominic Abelen.
When asked if there is any hope for Abelen's family and getting the Kiwi home, Ward said there is 'always hope'.
"In Ukraine, it's not necessarily that everything's being done by the book and it's all a bureaucratic kind of system… It's much more based on relationships.
"People who have known each other from either side of the divide, who may have a pre-existing relationship, who probably speak the same language, who are willing or able to make a deal in a sense - that's definitely what happened in the case of Joshua. It was a coordinated effort and a number of people were involved.
"[We've] seen it happening now at a pretty steady pace in terms of those types of swaps, so I'm confident and hopeful that we'll see more like it."
Ward also spoke to O'Brien about being pregnant on the job in Ukraine and how it has changed the way she works in order to keep her and her baby safe.
"I normally would spend more time near the front lines. Obviously, that was not on the cards for me," Ward said.
"I spent a lot of time thinking about the threat of deep vein thrombosis, driving for 16 hours, doing little exercises, wearing funny socks and stopping regularly along the route to make sure that I was keeping my circulation going.
"You have to be very good at planning and militant about self-care and just making sure that you're being good to yourself because your body's already working hard."
Ward talked about the push and pull for professional women who are mothers, telling O'Brien that mothers in general take on a lot of guilt while pregnant.
"It's always difficult," she said.
"We're constantly questioning, did we do the right thing? Are we being the best that we can be? How can we be better mothers?
"You get to a stage, though, where you really come to accept something that I fundamentally believe is true, which is you're going to be the best mother you can be when you are the best version of yourself that you can be, and the truest and most authentic version of yourself.
"Obviously, there are sacrifices that come along the way. Obviously, you can't be selfish in the ways that you may have been leading up to that point. But you also can't just stop being you and you can't stop having passion and having dreams.
"You can't stop, in my case, having a career that you love so much, that you feel so privileged to have and that you've worked so hard to obtain."
Listen to the full interview between Clarissa Ward and Tova above.
You can also download the full interview on the Tova podcast, and listen on the go.
