Drew Barrymore reflects on “cripplingly difficult” periods of her life after divorce
The actress and TV host spoke about the difficult and dark phase in her life
American actor turned TV host Drew Barrymore has opened up about how her long envisioned dream of a family slowly crumbled after her divorce from ex-husband Will Kopelman was finalized in 2016.
According to Fox News, an American news outlet, in an interview with People magazine, Barrymore, who shares two daughters with Kopelman, said that over the past decade she experienced an abundance of change and suffered through “cripplingly difficult” periods of her life.
She shared, “After the life I planned for my kids didn’t work out -- I almost think that was harder than the stuff [I went through] as a kid. It felt a lot more real because it wasn’t just me. It was about these kids that I cared so much about. And then I probably cared so much that I was only giving to them and not taking care of myself. It was a messy, painful, excruciating walk through the fire and come back to life kind of trajectory.”
Regarding her divorce, Barrymore said, “There was no scandal. Nothing went wrong, which is cleaner, but makes it harder and more confusing because there isn’t The Thing to point to...We tried so hard to make it work,” as per Fox News.
Barrymore moved from California to New York to be closer to her ex-husband’s family and give her children as much of a traditional family life as she had intended.
“’This is a family, so nobody’s going anywhere.’ I was determined to make it work because we all loved each other so much,” she recalled thinking at the time.
“There are times where you can look at someone you think is a strong person and see them so broken and go, ‘How the [expletive] did they get there?’ And I was that person. I broke,” she said of her first winter in New York.
Barrymore, who suffered from substance abuse issues earlier in her life, turned to drinking. Her children ultimately motivated the 47-year-old to stop drinking. She also went to therapy. “It was my kids that made me feel like it’s game time,” she said of her life-change, reported Fox News.
In hindsight, Barrymore believes this has been the “best decade” of her life. But she also admits there is room for growth.