Susan Lucci opens up about losing her husband of 52 years, the love of her life, and finding joy again after profound loss

Susan Lucci has played a lot of unforgettable scenes in her life. If you grew up watching All My Children, you probably still remember Erica Kane doing the absolute most.

She survived scandal, heartbreak, and plenty of soap opera chaos. She even faced down a grizzly bear and yelled, “I am Erica Kane, and you are a filthy beast!”

But Susan Lucci is clear that none of that compares to what happened off-camera. She opens up about the loss that reshaped her world after her husband, Helmut Huber, died in 2022.

And she is sharing more of that journey in her new memoir, La Lucci, out Feb. 3 from Blackstone Publishing.

Erica Kane was dramatic, but real grief is different

On All My Children, Erica Kane had decades of plot twists. The show ran for more than 40 years, and Erica’s life was rarely calm. She had at least 11 weddings to eight men, battled alcoholism, and dealt with a doppelgänger who tried to steal her life.

That is classic daytime television. It is wild, it is over the top, and in the end, the character always comes back for the next episode.

Real life does not work that way. Lucci’s husband, Helmut Huber, died at age 84, one month after a stroke. They had been married for 52 years. That kind of love is not a storyline you wrap up quickly.

It is a whole life. And when it is gone, you do not just bounce back because the next scene needs you. As Lucci tells PEOPLE, “The minute I fell in love as I did with my husband, I knew how vulnerable I was.” 

That line hits hard because it is so true. Loving someone deeply means you are also accepting the risk of losing them.

The loneliness that comes after loss

One of the most honest parts of Lucci’s reflections is how isolating grief can feel, even when you are surrounded by people who care about you. She says, “I was completely lost [after he died]. And it’s so isolating. You feel so alone, even though I had the most wonderful friend. I am so grateful for the people who stood by me.”

That is the thing about grief. Support helps, but it does not erase the silence when the house feels different. It does not replace the person you used to tell everything to. You can have a full calendar and still feel like you are walking around in a fog.

Lucci is not trying to dress it up. She is describing what many people experience but struggle to say out loud.

Writing La Lucci started in the middle of the night

Lucci’s new memoir, La Lucci, is a follow-up to her 2011 book All My Life, A Memoir. This time, the story includes her grief, her memories, and her process of finding her footing again.

And the way it began feels very human. She says it started, “in the middle of the night.” She keeps a pen and paper by her bed in case she gets an idea. Sometimes it is to stop her mind from spinning so she can sleep. But during this season of her life, something else happened. As she puts it, “And in this case, I started waking up, and things just started pouring out of me.”

Anyone who has dealt with loss knows that nights can be the hardest. The distractions are gone. The quiet gets loud. It makes sense that the words came then, when she had no choice but to sit with what she was feeling.

Feeling like half a person

Even for someone with a legendary career, grief can flatten everything. Lucci explains how disorienting it was to imagine life without her husband. 

“I felt like half a person,” she says. “I could hardly remember that I was an actress. It didn’t mean anything to me. I thought, ‘Do I do that? Really?’ I thought at that time I probably will never go in front of a camera or go on stage again.”

That is not just sadness. That is identity-shaking grief, the kind that makes you question everything that used to feel normal. People often assume that fame or success protects you from that. It does not. Loss does not care who you are.

The love story at the center of it all

La Lucci also includes joyful memories from Lucci’s decades with Huber. He was an Austrian-born producer, and she married him at 22 after eight months of dating. Together they raised two children, daughter Liza, 50, a former actress who appeared on Passions, and son Andreas, 45.

Lucci writes about Huber with warmth and admiration. She describes him as a “classically trained chef” with a “great sense of humor.” He called her “Susie” and loved to drive fast, ski, golf, and cook her European comfort food.

When PEOPLE asks what she misses most, her answer is simple and devastating in its honesty: “Everything. It’s hard to say one thing. I just miss him, miss his presence, miss sharing things together, like coffee in the morning.”

That last detail tells you everything. Grief is not only about losing the big moments. It is about losing the small rituals that quietly hold your life together.

Looking for joy again, without denying the grief

Lucci will turn 80 in December, and she says she wakes up with a purpose now. “I am looking for joy again,” she writes in the book. She finds it in work, travel, friends, and “time spent with family, especially my grandchildren,” but grief still comes in waves.

What is striking is her approach to those low moments. She says, “I don’t fight it,” and notes that the waves come less frequently now. “I’m surprised sometimes by it. Certainly, there are things like the holidays that are triggers, and someone who should be sitting at the table. But I just go with it.”

That mindset feels like real healing. Not forcing yourself to be fine. Not pretending it is over. Just letting it move through you.

“After the rain, the sun she shines”

When grief threatens to take over, Lucci holds tight to what Huber left her, including a line he used to say in his Austrian accent: “After the rain, the sun she shines.” Lucci calls it healing. “They still help me,” she says. “His words stick with me. He was really my rock.”

It is not a perfect sentence, and that is what makes it perfect. It sounds like him. It carries his voice. And it reminds her that better moments can return, even when the loss stays.

La Lucci will be released Feb. 3 by Blackstone Publishing and is available for preorder wherever books are sold.

TL;DR

• Susan Lucci opens up in PEOPLE about the intense grief she felt after her husband of 52 years, Helmut Huber, died in 2022 following a stroke.
• She says grief left her feeling isolated and unmoored, even with supportive friends around her.
• Lucci began writing her new memoir, La Lucci, during sleepless nights when thoughts and memories started “pouring out.”
• She shares that she felt like “half a person” and even questioned whether she would ever act again.
• The book includes loving memories of Huber, their family, and the everyday moments she misses most, like morning coffee together.
• Lucci says she is “looking for joy again” through work, travel, friends, and time with her children and grandchildren.
• She does not fight grief when it comes, especially during triggers like the holidays, and lets it pass in waves.
• Huber’s mantra, “After the rain, the sun she shines,” still comforts her and helps her keep going.

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This article was made with AI assistance and human editing.