Savannah Guthrie says the 'Today' show is 'part of my purpose'

• Savannah Guthrie will return as co-host of the "Today" show on April 6, it was announced Friday.
• Guthrie has been on hiatus from the show since the disappearance of her mom, Nancy Guthrie.
• During an interview, Savannah Guthrie said the show is "part of my purpose."

Savannah Guthrie said in an emotional interview that aired Friday that the "Today" show is "part of my purpose" as the network announced her plan to return as co-host of the NBC morning program early next month.

"It's hard to imagine doing it, because it's such a place of joy and lightness, and I can't come back and try to be something that I'm not, but I can't not come back because it's my family," Guthrie told co-anchor Hoda Kotb in the interview, adding, "I think it's part of my purpose right now."

Guthrie has been on hiatus from the "Today" show since the disappearance of her mother, Nancy Guthrie, nearly two months ago.

She will resume her host role on April 6, her "Today" show colleagues said after the final part of the interview about her mother's disappearance aired on Friday.

Authorities believe that the 84-year-old woman was abducted from her ranch-style home just outside of Tucson, Arizona, in the middle of the night.

Savannah Guthrie said she considers her "Today" show colleagues her family and isn't sure she can return to her job amid the "agony" she and her relatives are facing, but said, "I would like to try."

"I want to smile, and when I do, it will be real, and my joy will be my protest," Savannah Guthrie said, noting, "I'm not going to be the same, but maybe it's like that whole poem 'more beautiful in the broken places.'"

During the tearful interview, Savannah Guthrie continued to beg the public for help as authorities search for her missing mother.

"How can someone vanish without a trace? How? Someone knows something, even if that something is someone's been acting strange for the last seven, eight weeks, even if it's just that somebody knows," she said. "And maybe somebody's afraid, I understand that, but our hearts are in agony."

"We can't breathe, we can't live, we can't go on, we can't be at peace. We can't go forward," Savannah Guthrie said. "We have to know what happened to her."