"I’ve had my own loss and seen my life take a different direction. And it hurt more than I imagined it ever would.
“Her family is broken and she is in agony. Her children are recovering from the events that brought about the filing.”
"We’re all just healing from the events that led to the filing . . . They’re not healing from divorce. They’re healing from some . . . from life, from things in life.”
“It’s just been the hardest time, and we’re just kind of coming up for air. [The DeMille] is a big jump forward for us, and we’re all trying to do our best to heal our family.”
"My whole family… we’ve all been through a difficult time. "
“None of it’s easy. It’s very, very difficult, a very painful situation, and I just want my family healthy.”
"I don't like [being single]. It's not something I wanted...there’s just nothing nice about it. It’s just hard."
"I now know what it’s like to be alone and to wrap my coat around those I love. And I know the overwhelming sense of gratitude at being strong enough to keep them safe and warm. When your children come into your life, they immediately and forever come first."
"I've spent most of my days just taking care of the children. I will eventually balance more and do more work but because of family issues it's been extremely tough."
"We are and forever will be a family. I am coping with finding a way through to make sure that this somehow makes us stronger and closer."
"I am a big believer that we have to make mistakes in life and learn from them. And that we are who we are because of all the things we have done right and wrong. We grow."
"I think it is not said enough how much we need the men in our lives to be strong and capable and the best they can be."
"It is a lovely thing to discover that your children don’t want you perfect. They just want you honest. And doing your best."
"But now, with my girls growing up and being the ages I remember so well as a daughter, I am rediscovering my mother and her spirit. She was a girl who danced all night on the Sunset Strip and loved rock 'n' roll. She was a woman who loved, even after loss, and never lost her grace and her smile."
"The real truest love pulls out your best self. It's what you value, what you're loyal to and what you're willing to fight for."
"Sometimes you get hurt, you see those you love in pain, and you can’t be as free and open as your spirit desires."
"I wear perfume every day... It's nice for a woman to have a scent that her lover remembers, who identifies it with her.”
"Strong women love and learn from men."
"We care for each other and care about our family, and we are both working towards the same goal.""I'm unsure of the future, but I'm not concerned. I will rely on those closest to me. And will share their burdens, as they share mine. I will live, and love."
"This #MothersDay I think of refugee mothers I have met," writes Angelina Jolie. "Through them, I’ve come to believe that a mother is the strongest person on earth. The softness of her skin is deceptive. She is a force driven by love and loyalty." https://t.co/rkUaRpYn1s— New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) May 9, 2020
Marcheline Bertrand with her husband Jon Voight and son James in 1975, when she was pregnant with daughter Angelina Jolie. Credit...Angelina Jolie
This year, I’m remembering my mom’s spirit, and the power of so many women I’ve met around the world.
Mother’s Day is hard for anyone who has lost their mom, but this year must be particularly so because of coronavirus. So many people have lost a parent suddenly, without being by their side, able to care for them and return their love in the way they’d always imagined.
I lost my mother in my thirties. When I look back to that time, I can see how much her death changed me. It was not sudden, but so much shifted inside. Losing a mother’s love and warm, soft embrace is like having someone rip away a protective blanket.
I got a small tattoo on my right hand after my mother died, knowing that hand tattoos fade. It looks to others like a letter “m.” But it wasn’t an “m” for Marcheline, her name. It was a “w” for “Winter” — the Rolling Stones song she sang to me as a baby, and that I remember loving as a little girl. “It sure been a cold, cold winter,” she would sing to me. And at the line, “I wanna wrap my coat around you,” she would wrap me up in my blankets and snuggle me.
I loved my mom. She was raised Catholic on the South Side of Chicago. My grandfather, who fought in World War II, loved bowling, M*A*S*H, Benny Hill and my grandmother, Lois. My grandmother died before I was born, when my mother was in her twenties. “Diamond Lois,” my mother’s boyfriend called her. Not because she was a socialite but because she scrubbed the floor in her diamonds. Before my grandparents moved to Los Angeles in the 1960s, they ran a bowling alley. Their parents before them ran a bar.
She loved to feel alive. She loved to laugh. When I was down, she would break out those rock songs and remind me of the fire within. One of my early memories is of her lighting candles and placing Beatles albums around the house the night John Lennon was killed. The other time I recall her being worried about a public figure’s health was when Pope John Paul II was shot.
Losing her mother made her deeply sad. When my father had an affair, it changed her life. It set her dream of family life ablaze. But she still loved being a mother. Her dreams of being an actor faded as she found herself, at the age of 26, raising two children with a famous ex who would cast a long shadow on her life. After she died, I found a video of her acting in a short film. She was good. It was all possible for her.
Before her death, she told me that dreams can simply change shape. Her dream to be an artist was in fact her mother’s dream. And later she hoped it would be mine. I think of how true that must be for so many women before us, whose dreams have taken generations to realize.
Listening to “Winter” now, I realize how lonely and afraid my mother must have been, but also how determined she was to fight to make sure her children were all right. As the “w” faded on my hand, so did that feeling of home and protection. Life has taken many turns. I’ve had my own loss and seen my life take a different direction. And it hurt more than I imagined it ever would.
But now, with my girls growing up and being the ages I remember so well as a daughter, I am rediscovering my mother and her spirit. She was a girl who danced all night on the Sunset Strip and loved rock 'n' roll. She was a woman who loved, even after loss, and never lost her grace and her smile.
I now know what it’s like to be alone and to wrap my coat around those I love. And I know the overwhelming sense of gratitude at being strong enough to keep them safe and warm. When your children come into your life, they immediately and forever come first.
This Mother’s Day, I think of refugee mothers I have met, living in poverty and displacement. Every one began her journey of motherhood with a promise to do all she could to protect her child. To lay down her life if necessary. And if she is defeated and silenced, few things are more tragic.
Through refugees, I’ve come to believe that a mother is the strongest person on earth. The softness of her skin is deceptive. She is a force driven by love and loyalty. There is no one who solves more problems. When she has only love to give, it pours from her soul.
When a mother comes to you for help and you do not provide it, she may weep. But she will never give up. When you deny her child safety and shelter, she may seek it in a hostile land where her body is vulnerable to abuse. Her heart will be sick with loss. But she will fight on for her child. Because she is a mother.
Women who are abused aren’t “weak women,” they are often mothers. They are often trying to manage danger with no way out. They will stand between their child and harm. They will face isolation and criticism. But their only thought will be: “Hurt me, not my child. Insult and ignore me, not my child. Take away my food, but not my child’s.”
A woman like this will suffer unimaginable pain in war or in a refugee camp, but she will not leave her child and seek another life. She will sit for 10 years, 20 years or more if necessary. I remember all the beautiful faces of the refugee mothers I have met, like pages in a family album. Their eyes full of exhaustion, but never giving up. Because they who were once daughters must now wrap their own child in a blanket.
Nothing is more painful for a mother or father than to be unable to provide their child with the things they need. This is a reality many more families are facing during this pandemic, even in America. But I have learned that when children know how much you love them, sometimes that understanding counts for more than the thing itself. And when they grow up, knowing that you never abandoned them, or left them in an unsafe situation, or ever stopped fighting for them, will be what counts.
So to the mothers everywhere who feel helpless — yet who still give every last bit of energy, every last bite of food and the only blanket to their children — I honor you.
And to anyone who is grieving this Mother’s Day, I hope you will find consolation and strength in your memories.
Angelina Jolie is a filmmaker and special envoy of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
The content is moderate in impact.
