Watch: Jordana Brewster Reveals She Had a Crush on Paul Walker
Jordana Brewster is opening up about her road to motherhood.
The Fast X actress—who welcomed sons Julian, 12, and Rowan, 10, via surrogate with ex-husband Andrew Form—shared she had trouble adjusting to motherhood after making the difficult choice not to carry her children herself.
“I felt like I had a dirty little secret,” Brewster wrote in a personal essay for The Cut titled “Making Peace With My Surrogacy” published June 22. “I hadn’t earned my child.”
Sharing that she felt like an “impostor” amongst other mothers, The Pirate King actress detailed how after seeing the sonogram for her first baby while accompanying her surrogate to a doctor’s appointment, she suddenly felt the weight of her decision.
“I’m driving south, I realized on the ride back, and my child is heading north to a home I don’t know, hearing sounds I can’t recognize, getting used to routines foreign to me,” she wrote. “I sobbed and sobbed in my hotel room until I almost vomited. I wanted to vomit, actually, because at least that would be real.”
“Maybe I just wanted to punish myself for not doing what any self-respecting woman can do: carry her own child,” she added. “Pregnancy and childbirth were rites of passage, and I was grieving an experience I hadn’t known I even wanted in the first place.”
Indeed, Brewster—who filed for divorce from Form in 2020 before marrying husband Mason Morfit in 2022—shared her decision to welcome both her boys via surrogate “wasn’t entirely mine,” revealing she began to suffer from seizures when she was 28.
Photo by Monica Schipper/Getty Images
Sharing she was diagnosed with a cavernous malformation (CVM), which she described as “an abnormal cluster of tightly packed, thin-walled blood vessels, in the language area of my brain,” Brewster was warned against the complications the condition presented for pregnancy.
“I checked in with my doctor as a precaution. What he told me surprised me: He thought the increased blood flow caused by pregnancy would make it dangerous for myself and the baby,” she explained. “He suggested surgery, but after a functional MRI showed that the placement of the CVM made it hard to reach and could put my ability to speak and read at risk, I decided against it. I chose gestational surrogacy instead.”
But the 46-year-old wasn’t prepared for the complicated feelings the decision would bring.
“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.”
Photo by Phil McCarten/CBS via Getty Images
Though she was hoping for something to “click” for her “maternal instincts,” Brewster shared that didn’t come until a bit later. Eventually, however, she got into the groove of motherhood. And in 2016, she decided to pursue surrogacy again to welcome her second son.
In the years since welcoming her children, Brewster has accepted her path to parenthood.
“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,” she 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.”
For more stars who have detailed their surrogacy journeys, read on…
Daniele Venturelli/Getty Images for Luigi & Iango
Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images
Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Images
Instagram/Khloe Kardashian
Steve Granitz/FilmMagic
Jared Siskin/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images
Photo by Chelsea Lauren/Variety/REX/Shutterstock
Instagram / Andy Cohen
Michael Loccisano/Getty Images For CMT
Walter McBride/WireImage
Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for EJAF
Gerardo Mora/Getty Images
Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images
Steve Granitz/WireImage
Jason Kempin/Getty Images
Gregg DeGuire/WireImage
Jason Kempin/Getty Images for Family Equality Council
Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Disney
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