Sandra Bullock is known to be a fiercely private person when it comes to her family.
Sandra Bullock could be a role model for women of all ages. Right from the beginning, she worked immensely hard to carve out a niche for herself. She is loved and adored across the world for being her true, real self no matter what the situation. A big part of her life is her children Louis, 10, and Laila, 8.
While she tries hard to keep her children away from the limelight, she recently gave a rare glimpse into her life as a mother. It was Jennifer Aniston's birthday on February 11, and the Oscar-winning actress interviewed her close gal pal for Interview Magazine. The two strong women talked about a lot of issues from career to motherhood. And one of the highlights of the interview was their conversation about children and raising a family.
"I look at everyone who is trying to raise kids, and I go, 'How are we supposed to raise children outside of a bubble? And show them the difference between right and wrong, and what kindness looks like, when it's really hard to find it with all the noise on a screen?'" Bullock shared. "Do you just keep pointing to a higher power, going, 'You have to answer to that thing. Don't look at anything here on Earth. Just point up there?'" said the mother of two.
Aniston weighed in saying, "You can protect your children as much as possible, but they’re eventually going to become an 18-year old and go out in the world and they’re going to see all of it." But the Birdbox actress did not seem to agree; "Not my kids," she replied.
Aniston added, "They’re living with you for the rest of your life." To which Bullock made a revelation, "I gave them the places where they can go to college because that’s where mommy feels comfortable living. I said, 'You can go to these three colleges because I’m going to buy an apartment down the street.'"
In a light-hearted statement, the Friends star said, "You’re actually building a college at the bottom of the hill right now. By the time Louis and Laila are at the right ages, it’ll be 'I’ll just drive you there every single day. We can even walk and make it a physical experience.'"
"Jen says we need to get in 20,000 steps a day. I know you and I like to stay at home and be surrounded by the things that we’ve cultivated that are safe. It’s scary entering the world, but when we do, we feel good and we’re glad we did it. But the dread of being around people, I need to get better with that," Bullock added.
For someone like Sandy B who has gone through heartbreaks and tough challenges in life, being wary of life also meant not being able to trust people easily. “My life took a trajectory that wasn’t very pleasant,” she had earlier told Independent, “but I feel like it had to happen in order for me to fully understand what family was about.”
She also admitted that society is unfair to single mothers, but being the strong woman she is, she was not ready to let others determine what she can and cannot do. "Society’s hard,” she said. “Society still, as open-minded as we’ve become, has these rules that quietly say: ‘This is the way it goes.’ They’re saying: ‘It’s a man and a woman, and then you have a baby, and that’s the family.’ I go: ‘Oh my god, I’m a single parent. With a child. How am I…’ I felt less than. I felt: ‘I’m not the complete package.’ And then I realized… this is the complete package.” Now, it’s her mission to tell others the same. “It breaks my heart when I see people saying: ‘I can’t have that.’ Why not? Why can’t you have it?”
As we celebrate the spirit of two women who never gave up on life, we hope more women find inspiration from such stories and go after that their heart desires.
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