Reese Witherspoon Just Needs Love

Reese Witherspoon is featured on this week's cover of Parade magazine. In the article the working mom-of-two discusses her new film, her family, and moving on from her divorce.

Some highlights:

On needing love in her life:
'Do I need men? I don’t think it’s about needing men. It’s about love. Everybody needs love. Everyone deserves it.”

On being naïve in believing that her marriage to Ryan Phillippe would last forever:
“I wasn’t good about protecting myself. I spent a lot of my 20s just trying to make other people happy, rather than trying to figure out if doing that made me happy.”

On their divorce:
“There are things in my life that are hard to reconcile, like divorce. Sometimes it is very difficult to make sense of how it could possibly happen. Laying blame is so easy. I don’t have time for hate or negativity in my life. There’s no room for it. When you make wrong choices, you have to take responsibility for them: ‘What part of this do I own?’ I struggle to figure out what made me make those choices. All I can hope for is that I’ve learned something from it and won’t make the same choices again.”

On her decision to take an active roll in charities that help children and abused women, like the Avon Foundation and Save the Children:
“It’s not acceptable in this country that one in six children lives below the poverty line. People have to get back to really taking care of one another.”

On being a young woman in Hollywood:
“It takes perseverance and determination for any young woman to navigate the movie business. It’s deeply offensive when they are objectified, treated like sex toys. It’s so easy to get attention early on in your career when you promote only the sexual side of yourself. It gains you popularity, but it doesn’t mean anything. Five years later, no one knows your name, and you wonder why. Trust me, I’ve had my moments. I’m like a junkyard dog. I’d say, ‘Why are they asking me to wear a bikini?’ I get tough, because I see the slippery slope. I’ve heard the way roles are cast. There are a lot of women who don’t respect themselves and hurt themselves. I grew up knowing strong women who value who you are and what you contribute to life.” This sense of strength still helps Reese today.

On turning 30 and finding herself:
“Turning 30 was really big for me. I can get really stuck on ‘I don’t like this or that about myself.’ I’ve found that the only thing that breaks that for me is being able to spend time alone, going to the movies by myself or going to art museums alone. I do that a lot. I’ve discovered the importance of even 15 or 30 minutes a day where it is just me.”

On raising her kids, Ava and Deacon, with ex-husband Ryan Phillippe:
“My ex-husband is very involved in raising our beautiful children. We’re very lucky because we both grew up in working families in middle America. We’re on the same page that way. When we’re with our children, we’re very good about checking ourselves. I’m teaching the children what we were taught growing up—a real set of rules, discipline, and love. Children thrive with a sense of structure, and they’re frightened without it. The ways you behave, how you speak to other people—those things don’t leave you.”

On her views of marriage following her divorce:
“Family is all we have in life, but I don’t know how I feel about marriage. Obviously, I’m not far enough out of being married to think about doing it again. You sort of reconstitute your family. You find a family, with people who come into your life for a reason. I definitely still have a capacity to love. Someone said to me once, ‘No matter what breakup you went through or what new love you find—the love you remember, like the love you now value, is yours. Whatever love you once gave to somebody else, it doesn’t go away. Even if it is only remembered love, it belongs to you.' Things change, but your ability to love remains intact. Oh, I have a lot of hope for love! I do!”

Source: Parade