Jennifer Garner shared the ultimate advice for handling mom guilt.
Garner, 51, opened up about struggles that come with motherhood in a Monday, October 9, interview with Access Hollywood. “Working moms … get all freaked out because we’re told constantly, ‘You have 18 summers, you have this much time … Time is fleeting,’” she said. “It makes you panic, and my mom has always said to me, ‘You’re their mom forever. Don’t worry, you can do your job … your kids are gonna be so proud of you.’”
She continued, “If you come from a place of expansiveness instead of feeling just like, ‘I can’t be a mom because I’m also working and I’m supposed to be guilty all the time,’ you better just lean into wherever you are, any day, right now, just be there when your kids show up and we’ll have a great time.”
Garner explained that while there are times where she’s “fully around” and other times she’s “really not” due to work, everyone needs to give themselves “some grace.”
Garner shares three children with ex-husband Ben Affleck — Violet, 17, Seraphina, 13, and Samuel, 11. She and Affleck, 51, split in 2015 after 10 years of marriage. He has since married Jennifer Lopez in 2022, while she has been dating John Miller off and on since 2015. Garner was previously married to Scott Foley from 2002 through 2004.
Elsewhere in the interviews, Garner gushed about how much she loves Halloween, and what her “funny” costume this year may be.
“My favorite costume when I was little was in 4th grade [and] my mom made me a carrot,” she told Access Hollywood. Although she hasn’t started planning the costume yet, she shared, “I’ve just been thinking in the last couple days, I wonder if I would be happy as a carrot again.”
In the past, Garner has experimented with more playful costumes, including a mailbox, an old lady, a witch and more.
Last year, she joked about a “last minute costume idea,” which she named the “Late for the Bus Mom” via Instagram. The actress photoshopped a snap of herself rocking wet hair and a bathrobe onto a Spirit Halloween costume set. To the side, she listed everything the faux getup contained: “Wet hair wig, lukewarm coffee, cellphone mid-podcast, will and determination.”
She also quipped that although the costume allows “optional undergarments,” it does not include a “child already waiting in the car” or “lunchbox forgotten on kitchen counter.”
