Angelina Jolie is refreshingly honest about being a SAHM during the pandemic

Angelina Jolie is getting candid about parenting in a pandemic and getting older.

Jolie is British Vogue‘s cover star, and the actress didn’t hold back when it came to discussing her family.

The Maleficent: Mistress of Evil actress shares six kids with ex-husband Brad Pitt: Maddox, 19, Pax, 17, Zahara, 16, Shiloh, 14, and 12-year-old twins Vivienne and Knox.

Jolie has spent the past year quarantining with all six kids at her Los Angeles home.

“I was never very good at sitting still,” she said. “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.”

The usually globe-trotting star says that her children are helping her stay grounded through the pandemic.

“I feel like I’m lacking in all the skills to be a traditional stay-at-home mom,” she continued. “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.”

“I feel like we’re such a team,” she added. “It may sound clichéd, but you love and you try, and even if you burn the eggs, that doesn’t matter in the end.”

That sentiment really resonates with us at Motherly. When it comes to raising kids, you do your best. You love and you try.

Jolie also revealed that she struggled in the aftermath of her divorce from Pitt.

“The past few years have been pretty hard,” she admitted. “I’ve been focusing on healing our family. It’s slowly coming back, like the ice melting and the blood returning to my body.”

“But I’m not there. I’m not there yet. But I hope to be,” she added.

The Girl, Interrupted actress says she’s feeling more confident as she grows older.

“Maybe because… I don’t know… maybe because my mom didn’t live very long, so there’s something about age that feels like a victory instead of a sadness for me.”

Jolie’s mother, Marcheline Bertrand, died in 2007 of ovarian cancer. She was 56.

“I’m looking forward to my fifties – I feel that I’m gonna hit my stride in my fifties,” Jolie continued. “Though we were on the trampoline the other day, and the children said, ‘No, Mom, don’t do that. You’ll hurt yourself.’ And I thought, ‘God, isn’t that funny?’ There was a day I was an action star, and now the kids are telling me to get off the trampoline because I’ll hurt myself.”

She might be a glamorous movie star to us, but to her kids, Angelina Jolie is just their mom.

“They think that I’m a bit ridiculous, as they should. And they all know me in different ways. You know, they’ve all crossed into that moment when they realize that there’s nothing special about me. I’m just older. I don’t have all the secrets. I just mean well.”

When it comes to raising a blended, multicultural family, Jolie says that every day, they learn from and choose each other.

“I mean, that’s the thing for a lot of mothers, and for a lot of parents regardless. But I think even more so if you have adopted children. They have to choose you, too. It’s not the parents’ family and they’re in it. It’s our family.”

You can read Jolie’s full interview with Vogue here.

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