Deborah Norville on Leaving Inside Edition and Her Next Steps (Exclusive)

Deborah Norville is excited for her next chapter.

After 30 years anchoring Inside EditionNorville is leaving the series, with her last episode airing Wednesday, May 21. Speaking with PEOPLE about the monumental time in her career, Norville recalls coming to the show because “it was the right decision for me, because of who I was.”

“At that time, when I was leaving CBS News, they’d made me a great offer to be a weekend anchor one night, and Eye on America reporter four nights a week,” she tells PEOPLE. “But that meant I would have been on the road, and I was expecting my second child, and I knew I could not be the wife and mother that I wanted to be.”

“I couldn’t be the wife and mother that I aspired to be, if I was having to ask my husband to hold down the fort way, way more often than I should have been asking.”

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Norville, 66, explains that having a strong sense of what one stands for is a surefire compass when it comes to life’s many crossroads.

“Who you are is not what you do. That’s a label, but that’s not who you are. Who you are is what you believe in. Who you are is what motivates you. Who you are is what you think is important. Who you are is why you believe you were put on this planet,” she says.

“Those are the things that make up the definition of who you are. And when you use an appropriate, correct definition of who you are, as the foundation for making your life decisions, you’re going to make really good decisions.”

At the time she began on Inside Edition, Norville and husband Karl Wellner had two children and would welcome one more after she accepted the anchor job.

“Because I knew who I was, it was very easy for me to say, ‘Oh my gosh, this is an incredible offer. Thank you so much, CBS News, but I’m going to go accept this offer to be an anchor on Inside Edition,’ ” Norville says. “Because it will allow me to be home for my family. And it was. In fact, when my third child was born, I literally did Inside Edition from my hospital room.”

Today, Norville’s kids — Mikaela, 26, Kyle, 29, and Niki, 33 — are all grown up. And now the career journalist is excited to put family at the forefront.

“It’s the right move for my family, for my husband, for the entirety of our marriage. There’ve been too many times when my career had to come first, and I had to say, ‘You do understand?’ And he’d always say he did. He said the right thing and now I understand,” she says.

“What I understand is, it’s right for me to be there for him and to do the things that as a couple we really want to do. So I am overwhelmed with gratitude. People have been so incredibly lovely, and I’m just incredibly grateful for all of it.”

The experience bringing so many stories to life and into the homes of Inside Edition‘s faithful viewership has left Norville “overwhelmed with gratitude,” she says.

“I am grateful for the opportunity to have led this show. I’m grateful that Inside Edition offered for me to continue. I turned down their offer. I would’ve, but there are just things I want to do and places I want to do them that staying in the New York studio don’t permit. They were lovely.”

Norville may be shifting gears, but she’s not slowing down. “I’ve got a couple of things cooking that I can’t talk about just yet,” she teases.

What’s first up is the syndicated trivia game show The Perfect Line, set to premiere later this year.

“I think it’s going to be a great transition from Inside Edition because the show is built around pop culture and trivia. If you follow the news, you’ll be really good at this game show, but you don’t have to be wicked smart to be successful at it either,” she says. “I’m very excited about that. I think it’ll be a fun thing to sort of transition out of, but who knows? I might miss daily broadcasting so much that I’ll just say, ‘Okay, let’s come up with something.’ The story is yet to be written.”