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Drew Barrymore recalls text she sent to her estranged mom – and what she sent back

The actor legally emancipated herself from her parents when she was 14.
/ Source: TODAY

Drew Barrymore has been reflecting on legally separating from her parents when she was a teenager, and shared how her relationship with her mother has changed over the years.

Barrymore, 48, said in an interview with Vulture published on June 5 she recently texted her mother, Jaid Barrymore, for her birthday.

The full text to the Vulture reporter reads:

"I texted my mom for her birthday

and she told me she loved me

and she was proud of me.

I don’t care how old you get

Or how big your mission is

When your mom tells you

she loves you

You revert back to small

And the fact that she loves

me with my truth

And my honesty

Is the best time I have ever

heard her say it."

Just days after sending the text, Barrymore wrote an extended blog post for Mother's Day sharing she does communicate with her mother, now 77, despite their rocky past.

"I texted her. It simply read 'Happy birthday, Mom.' and she wrote back, 'Thank you so much! I’m incredibly proud of you and send you love,'" Barrymore wrote. "It was the biggest gift I could have ever received. To know that she is proud of me."

The daytime talk show host described to Vulture how she felt after texting her mother and writing the blog post.

"I was really excited I could tell you I’ve done some serious work and I do feel different," she said. "I forgive my mom. I forgive my dad. I’ve never forgiven myself, but I’d like to and I’m ready to."

Drew, Jaid Barrymore
Drew Barrymore posed with her mother, Jaid Barrymore, in New York in 1982.Yvonne Hemsey / Getty Images

Barrymore has been candid in the past about her turbulent childhood, saying her father, actor John Drew Barrymore, was largely not in the picture as she grew up, and that her mother struggled to give her appropriate boundaries.

"When I got emancipated by the courts at 14 years old, the umbilical cord was severed, and I have not been the same since," she wrote in her Mother’s Day blog post. "It was necessary for me to step away and start to become my own person. And at the age of 14, my own parent."

Barrymore said her relationship with her mother as a young girl was "more like my best friend" in an interview with Norm Macdonald in 2018.

Barrymore said, "She was like, 'Do you want to go to school and get bullied all day, or do you want to go to Studio 54?' And I was like, 'Yes, absolutely!'"

When Barrymore was 13, her mom sent her to a hospital called Van Nuys Psychiatric, a mental health facility for adults in California, where she spent nearly two years. The actor said she was placed in a youth program within the center.

“It was a drug rehabilitation center, where — like the adults in residence, once you came in you did not leave,” she wrote in her blog post.

That rehab center, while tough, also transformed her life and gave her the stability she needed to grow and learn about herself, Barrymore said.

“Kids love feeling safe, and having boundaries is one of those crucial bumper rails,” she wrote. “I lived a boundaryless life and job. And this place, as hellacious as it was, it was exactly what I needed from the too much excess my life had become on the outside.”

Even when Barrymore was a minor, tabloids at the time were publishing lurid stories about her struggles with addiction. 

“Shame entered the picture,” Barrymore said. “But in this institution, it was the opposite. It was, ‘Open up! Share!’”

Barrymore added that her time at the center helped her understand her own emotions and needs.

“It taught me the foundations of telling your truth. Not in a way that made you an immovable person on some high horse, but your story. Your feelings. Your faults. Your hopes and wishes. Your hurts. What and where you wanted to get to in life,” she wrote.

“And — very important — who was going to help you on your path and who would you have to let go,” she continued. “For me, at the end and when I got out, it was my mother.”

That realization led Barrymore to legally emancipate herself from her mom, a process she says her mother supported.

“Like, walking away from my mom and shaking hands, and saying, ‘We need to emancipate,’ those were just the facts,” Barrymore told TODAY in 2015. “That was where our journey had led us to, and we were actually OK with — that that’s where we needed to go at that point.”

Barrymore now has two daughters of her own, Frankie, 9, and Olive, 10, whom she shares with ex-husband Will Kopelman. 

“Being a mother constantly triggers everything from my own childhood now,” Barrymore wrote in her Mother's Day post. “I live in an often-petrified state of thinking about my past and wanting to have things different for them. I want them protected. I want them to grow up slowly. I want family around and traditions and rules and boundaries.”

She also said that being a mom is the “greatest thing” she will ever do in her life.

“Everything in my experience here on this pale blue dot has been for them,” she wrote. “And now it is also my chance to not make it about me but learn how to deal with all that comes with choosing to be a parent.”

She finished her Mother's Day blog post with a heartfelt message to her daughters.

“And to my girls … I just hope I can be someone who makes you feel safe,” she wrote. “And that you can laugh with. And that you can tell me anything. I’m here for it. I’m in the circle with you… for life.”