Angelina Jolie Once Shared That Her Kids Helped Her Find Herself
Angelina Jolie’s six kids was one of the singer’s most life-changing experiences. According to the Maria star, she might’ve ended up lost if it wasn’t for the family she built over the years.
Angelina Jolie revealed how parenting changed her
Jolie didn’t take becoming a mom lightly. As hard as it might be to believe now, there was even a period of time where she doubted she’d be a good mom at all. This changed, however, when she adopted her first child Maddox when she was 26-years-old. But before going through with the adoption process, there were many factors Jolie had to consider.
“I remember the decision to become a parent. It wasn’t hard to love. It wasn’t hard to dedicate myself to someone and something greater than my life,” Jolie once wrote for Time. “What was hard was knowing that from now on I needed to be the one to make sure everything was okay. To manage it and make it work. From food to school to medical. Whatever would come. And to be patient.”
It seemed Jolie was more than capable of adapting to the rigors of motherhood. So much so that after Maddox, she had five more children. And although the Wanted star undoubtedly affected her kids’ lives, her kids also affected her on a profound level.
“My children know my true self, and they have helped me to find it again and to embrace it. They have been through a lot. I learn from their strength. As parents, we encourage our kids to embrace all that they are, and all that they know in their hearts to be right, and they look back at us and want the same for us,” Jolie said in a 2019 interview with Harper’s Bazaar.
Angelina Jolie felt she lacked ‘traditional mom’ skills
Jolie acknowledged that her parenting might be slightly more unorthodox than others. She preferred to homeschool her six children, and one of the ways she taught them about the world was through her travels. The Tomb Raider star was an adventurer at heart, preferring to learn about different cultures around the world in person. She afforded her kids the same opportunities from the time they were young, a family tradition she’s maintained throughout the years.
“We’re never going to stop traveling. I think the greatest education I can give my kids, particularly as they are international children, is to keep them traveling,” Jolie once said in an interview with The Mirror (via People). “I think if they spend six months in Africa and come back to LA and then go to Asia for a few months we are showing them so much about the world and so much about understanding and tolerance and the beauty of other cultures.”
But she asserted not too long ago that her and her kids’ constant traveling impeded Jolie from learning more traditional parenting.
“I was never very good at sitting still. Even though I wanted to have many children and be a mom, I always imagined it kind of like Jane Goodall, traveling in the middle of the jungle somewhere,” Jolie once told Vogue. “I didn’t imagine it in that true, traditional sense. I feel like I’m lacking in all the skills to be a traditional stay-at-home mom.”
She further confided that her kids were trying to help her transition to a more stationary style of parenting.
“I’m managing through it because the children are quite resilient, and they’re helping me, but I’m not good at it at all,” she said. “I love them. I feel like we’re such a team. It may sound clichéd, but you love and you try, and even if you burn the eggs, that doesn’t matter in the end.”
