Alicia Quarles Tears Up Recalling Late Mom’s Support During Mental Breakdown: 'She Never Wavered' (Exclusive)

Alicia Quarles is remembering how her late mother, Terry Linda Quarles, was there for her during the most difficult time in her life. 

In PEOPLE’s exclusive sneak peek at Friday’s episode of Tamron Hall, the Emmy-winning journalist, 41, recalled her mother’s support after she was arrested following the livestream of her severe anxiety attack in August 2022.

"I get arrested and I wake up in the ER chained to the hospital bed. I'm telling them I'm pregnant," began Quarles, who discovered she was expecting twins on the same day she streamed her mental health crisis.

Quarles detailed how the first police officer monitoring her was surprised to see her still there several hours later.

"They take me to get an ultrasound. I never got it," she recalled. "Hours later, I'm in this room. So I get transferred to a jail. I'm saying, ‘Hey, I'm pregnant. Can I have any food?’”

After waiting hours for a bag of chips, Quarles said she was transported to court to get arraigned without shoes or contacts, describing the treatment as “inhumane.”

“I'm in this holding cell and I walk out. I have very bad vision, but I could see my mom and I could see my aunt. And that's when it all got real,” she said. “You just think, ‘Did I embarrass my family? Did I mess up?’”

“That overwhelmed me, but my mother was right by my side. She never, ever wavered. Ever. And that's a mom,” she continued through her tears.

The journalist and GMA3 contributor shared that she recently lost her mother in May just four days before Mother’s Day.

“We were planning our first Mother’s Day Together, we were so excited,” she told Hall, 52.

However, Quarles said she is “finding meaning” in the loss and is following her Good Morning America colleague Robin Roberts’ mantra: “Make a message of your mess.”

“I really turned my pain into triumph,” Quarles explained. “My mother lived long enough to meet my babies. She lived and was there for me through the hardest part of my life."

She added, “At a time when so many people weren't celebrating my pregnancy, my mother did, my father did, my family did.”

“I was talking to my mother the day before she passed. Beautiful things,” the journalist recounted. “When she passed, my father, sister and I were there and we kissed her and we saw her over, we prayed her over to the next life.”

“I miss my mom, but I'm at peace because there was nothing left unsaid between us,” she explained, once again reiterating, “That’s a mom.”

Following the sudden loss of her mother, who died of complications from a fall, Quarles opened up to PEOPLE in May about that tumultuous time at the onset of her pregnancy.

She revealed that she learned she was 11 weeks pregnant on the same day she went live on Instagram to document her extreme anxiety attack, telling PEOPLE, “The day I found out I was pregnant it was just a spiral."

However, after learning that she was expecting twins a week later, “a total peace came over me and it felt like it all made sense,” she said. “It was like, ‘Okay, I went through that to get to this.’”

Nine months later, Quarles exclusively revealed to PEOPLE that she welcomed her now-6-month-old fraternal twins, son Hudson and daughter Harlow, in February 2023.

“I truly believe that my babies saved my life," she told PEOPLE in May. "If I kept going at the pace I was, I wouldn’t have been here for long."

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Tamron Hall airs weekdays (check local listings).