The mom of two first revealed her daughter’s type 1 diabetes diagnosis to PEOPLE in a May cover story

Since leaving Today, Hoda Kotb has been able to have “smaller conversations” with her kids. But the impact they have is immeasurable.

Kotb, 61, reunited with her former Today co-anchor and longtime friend, Jenna Bush Hager, for the Sept. 23 episode of her podcast, Open Book with Jenna. At one point, the mom of two — she shares daughters with her ex-fiancé Joel Schiffman — opened up about a special chat she had with her youngest about what it’s like to live with type 1 diabetes.

Since leaving the show, Kotb told host Bush Hager, 43, she’s “noticed” that she’s “been able to have smaller conversations,” with daughters Haley, 8, and Hope, 6. “So here’s one.”

“Yesterday, Hope was on the potty, and I’m reading Cinderella, which is totally normal, on her cat bed — which I don’t even know why we have that. There’s a cat bed. There’s no cat. We just have a cat bed. She likes it,” the Today alum began.

“So I’m reading to her about Cinderella,” she recalled, “and I close the book and I look at her and she’s just looking at me with those big brown eyes and I go, ‘Can I ask you something, honey?’ And she goes, ‘Yeah.’ And I go, ‘What’s it like to have diabetes?’ ”

Kotb continued, “And she looked at me and she goes, ‘Well, it hurts, with the needles, and it, and it hurts my feelings when I can’t have things other kids have sometimes. And then I sometimes think, “Oh well, that’s my life, and then I think maybe it’ll go away.’ And then she looks at me and she said, ‘What’s it like for you?’”

“I go, ‘For me?’ She goes, ‘To have me.’ And I said, ‘Oh my God.’”

Her reply to the 6-year-old, Kotb said, was: “Having you is a big statement from God saying basically, I gave you the strongest one, so I feel really, really lucky to have you.”

“And she goes, ‘Okay, will you wipe me?’ And I’m like, ‘Yes,’ but all I was thinking was I sprint through life, and I miss it,” the Today alum recalled, “because I don’t pause long enough to even sit for a minute and have a conversation without thinking about, ‘Gotta go, gotta text, gotta’… and I think that’s what I was realizing like, all these littler conversations are coming out.”

Bush Hager then chimed in, “The littler that are actually huge — like, that was what you probably wrote down in your journal this morning.”

“Yes, that was it,” Kotb added. “And so I keep reminding myself like, you know, ‘Take it small, get all the conversations, know your kids, ask them.’ ”

The mom of two first revealed her daughter’s diabetes diagnosis to PEOPLE in a May cover story — over two years after a sudden onset of mysterious symptoms landed Hope in the hospital for two weeks and forced Kotb to take a leave of absence from the Today show.

“She is a happy, healthy, rambunctious, amazing kid, and we have to watch her,” Kotb said at the time. “Diabetes is a part of her but not all of her. I hope it shapes her but never defines her.”

The former TV personality stepped away from Today in January in order to spend more time with her daughters and to focus on her new wellness business venture, Joy 101. Back in May, Kotb opened up to PEOPLE about the decision to exit the show after 17 years.

“It’s really cool to just realize that there’s so much more to life,” she told PEOPLE at the time. “I wasn’t able to bear witness to my kids’ daily lives because of what I was doing. I got to see Haley sing ‘What a Wonderful World’ at 9:15 a.m. — I would have missed that.”

“I used to think life was the big things,” she added, “but it really is all the stuff that happens in between.”