- Content: Jennifer Garner’s Advice for Moms: Just Be Present
By Movieguide® Contributor
13 GOING ON 30 actress Jennifer Garner shared an important piece of advice for mothers.
In an interview with Access Hollywood, Garner stated, “Working moms…get all freaked out because we’re told constantly, ‘You have 18 summers, you have this much time…Time is fleeting.’ It makes you panic.”
“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,” she added.
Garner credits much of her mentality towards motherhood to her own mom, Patricia Ann Garner.
“My mom has always said to me, ‘You’re their mom forever. Don’t worry, you can do your job. You’re their mom forever. I wish I had worked. I would have been a better mom. Your kids are going to be so proud of you,’” Garner said, per Page Six.
The actress co-founded Once Upon a Farm, an organic food company designed to help busy moms.
“Moms get how hard it is,” Garner told PEOPLE of moms’ desire to feed their kids healthy food. “We just want to make life easier for them and give them food they can trust and don’t have to stress over.”
Garner emphasized, though, that moms don’t need to strive for perfection.
“There are no absolutes,” she told PEOPLE. “To put that kind of pressure on yourself, to have the idea that everything has to be perfect? No. That’s just an unrealistic idea of what we’re all trying to accomplish.”
Garner shares three children—Violet, 17, Seraphina, 13, and Samuel, 11—with ex-husband Ben Affleck.
Movieguide® previously reported Garner’s balance with her kids and work:
Although balancing a career in Hollywood, taking care of her children, and the work she does for Save the Children is not always easy, Garner said she is thankful for family time.
“I love being home with [my kids], and I’ve been so lucky to have the flexibility to be home a lot,” Garner said. “But I miss the days of going on location and will be excited to just be like, ‘Yeah, you want me in North Carolina? You want me in Budapest? You want me in Paris? Yes! I can do all those things.’ I feel like I’ll zip around a little.”
She added: “I do so many different things. Sometimes I feel like I work inside of a blender. I mean sometimes the lid of the blender flies off and you get a smoothie all over your kitchen. That happens too. It’s not always pretty. But we get it done.”
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