Jena Malone shares honest message about 'motherhood, depression, and self-worth': 'This struggle is real'
"I don't have anything beautiful to say. Except that this struggle is real. The sharp edges are too much to hold without compassion." — Jena Malone, opening up about motherhood, depression and self-worth, on Instagram
Parenthood isn’t always easy — which is something Jena Malone can attest to.
The 32-year-old mother of one got super honest on Instagram Wednesday, writing a caption about “motherhood, depression and self worth” to accompany an artistic, blurry photo of herself and son Ode Mountain, 14 months.
“I don’t have anything beautiful to say. Except that this struggle is real,” wrote the Sucker Punch actress. “The sharp edges are too much to hold without compassion.”
“I’m struggling with this. Compassion for myself and this moment of growth in my life,” she adds. “I know I am not alone in this. I guess I just needed to share, in hopes of being seen and feeling not so very much alone.”
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A post shared by Jena Malone (@jenamalone) on Aug 23, 2017 at 4:09pm PDT
A post shared by Jena Malone (@jenamalone) on Jun 12, 2017 at 4:09pm PDT
Malone has been largely out of the spotlight since welcoming Ode in May with fiancé Ethan DeLorenzo. She has written about some of her parenting journey on Instagram, as well as her blog Our Mountain Family.
“I have been very inactive on social media since the birth of my son,” she blogged in November. “It was not a conscious break. I simply didn’t have time to post as much. The things that seemed important to me before my son came into the world just didn’t feel as important now. ”
A post shared by Jena Malone (@jenamalone) on Aug 17, 2017 at 11:21am PDT
Earlier this month, the Donnie Darko star wrote a lengthy message to her son, assuring him of her belief in him and promising to be there to teach him everything she can.
“All I can do is show you, my dear boy, what it is to be a human, in the long history of being human, on a planet at the edge of another collapse, during the fall of an empire convoluted with so much hate,” Malone wrote. “I can only lead by example one step at a time. I can only show you how our history lives in our skin, the good and the bad and the ugly of it.”
“I can only teach you rituals of gratitude and love and hope that the millionth time we greet the sun in awe, it sticks,” she added. “There’s only so much I can do for you until you must do it for yourself.”
