Jordana Brewster is baring it all and getting real about her motherhood insecurities after relying on a surrogate to have her sons.
“I felt like I had a dirty little secret: I hadn’t earned my child,” Brewster, 46, recalled in a Monday, June 22, essay for The Cut, adding that she felt like an “imposter” after welcoming her first baby, son Julian, in 2013.
Brewster confessed that after a 3-D sonogram in Texas for her first child, she was driving south and “realized” that her baby was “heading north to a home I don’t know, hearing sounds I can’t recognize, getting used to routines foreign to me.”
“I sobbed and sobbed in my hotel room until I almost vomited. I wanted to vomit, actually, because at least that would be real,” the Dallas alum recalled. “Maybe I just wanted to punish myself for not doing what any self-respecting woman can do: carry her own child. Pregnancy and childbirth were rites of passage, and I was grieving an experience I hadn’t known I even wanted in the first place.”
Brewster explained that the choice to do surrogacy for both of her sons “wasn’t entirely mine,” revealing that when she was 28 she suffered her first seizure.
The Heart Eyes actress, who was married to Andrew Form at the time, shared that doctors eventually discovered that she had a “mulberry-size cavernous malformation (CVM), an abnormal cluster of tightly packed, thin-walled blood vessels, in the language area of my brain.”
CVM could cause seizures and potentially life-threatening bleeding, symptoms that can be controlled by medication, a change in diet and in some circumstances, surgery.
Brewster didn’t take issue when a doctor told her that, for her health, she should avoid roller coasters and deep-sea diving. Three years later, however, she discovered that her health issue would also complicate her path towards motherhood.
When Brewster was 31 she said she started to think about having a baby, but her doctor told her that “the increased blood flow caused by pregnancy would make it dangerous for myself and the baby.”
After suggesting surgery, the Fast X actress said her doctor discovered that the placement of the CVM could possibly affect her ability to speak and read, so she opted against having a procedure. Brewster then turned to gestational surrogacy and soon after the seeds of doubt about how she could measure up as a mother without carrying her baby crept in.
“The preparation kept me busy, but it was empty. I was playing the role of mother-to-be while feeling nothing,” Brewster confessed of her road to motherhood. “The birth would change that, I was sure. I knew all about the overwhelming, profound love a mother feels for her child when she first holds him.”
When her eldest son was born in September 2013, recalled wanting to hold him “and have skin-on-skin contact as soon as possible.”
Brewster even pushed to take her baby home 24 hours after his birth, telling herself, “It was my turn to be a mother, and I wanted to do it my way. The thing is, I didn’t entirely feel like one yet. I felt like an impostor.”
She was hopeful that in time “something will click” and her “maternal instinct” would take over, but Brewster said the first eight months of Julian’s life weren’t easy.
When Brewster moved back to Los Angeles after working in Texas on a project right after her son’s birth, she was “excited” to be near family and friends and hopefully “find community in new moms.”
The Pirate King star’s shame and fears about being unworthy, however, were front and center when she joined a mommy and me group.
She recalled introducing herself by blurting out everything that was on her mind. “‘Hi, I’m Jordana, this is Julian. I had a gestational surrogate, brain thing, I couldn’t carry. So I don’t breastfeed,’” Brewster remembered saying. “I pointed to my left temple. Jesus, Jordana, I thought to myself. You are the embodiment of ‘Manic Mama, Anxious Baby.’”
While the other mothers welcomed her into the fold, Brewster confessed she wished she was “more honest back then” with the new moms.
“Maybe they were also struggling with being present. Maybe they didn’t feel an immediate shift and connection after giving birth,” she wrote. “But I kept quiet, convinced I was the only one. I kept quiet for years, on playdates, at school conferences, during sports matches.”
Brewster confessed, “The worst part of feeling like an impostor is that it creates an opening for other people’s cruelty,” noting that when her son was in kindergarten the head of the school suggested she take off a year of work to “bond” with him amid alleged behavioral issues.
“Rather than consider whether she was gaslighting me, her suggestion confirmed my worst fear: Everything was my fault,” she revealed.
When Brewster welcomed her second son, Rowan, in June 2016 via surrogate, she had “community” with her close family and chose to host a music and sensory-based class for 15 other moms, slowly finding her way.
“The shame dissipated slightly,” she recalled, before telling readers that two years after Rowan was born her medication stopped working for CVM and she had two seizures within six months.
After the second seizure, which happened while she was driving, Brewster knew it was time to have the risky operation.
She underwent an awake craniotomy in 2020 shortly after asking her husband for a divorce, knowing the surgery was best for her family. (Brewster filed for divorce in July 2020 after 13 years of marriage. She married Mason Morfit in September 2022.)
“Six years post-surgery, I feel softer, lighter,” she wrote. “Maybe the surgery needed to happen so that I could somehow reconcile the choice not to carry my kids. Maybe that’s too simple an answer. Maybe it’s both.”
Brewster reflected on her journey to motherhood, revealing that her first surrogate told her when they met that she was “doing the easy part” and that the “real work” would be raising her children.
“The real work of motherhood isn’t just pregnancy. It’s in the small, invisible, daily acts: the playdates, food fairs, school meetings, emergency-room visits, the cosleeping,” Brewster concluded. “It’s in how I give over my time, energy, and attention day after day. Becoming a mother is earned; it’s not a given.”
