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Angelina Jolie remembered her late mother, Marcheline Bertrand, in a poignant new essay for the New York Times. In her piece, the 44-year-old actress reflected on how profoundly her mother’s 2007 death from ovarian cancer affected her. “I lost my mother in my thirties,” Jolie wrote of Bertrand, who died at age 56. “When I …
Angelina Jolie remembered her late mother, Marcheline Bertrand, in a poignant new essay for the New York Times.
In her piece, the 44-year-old actress reflected on how profoundly her mother’s 2007 death from ovarian cancer affected her.
“I lost my mother in my thirties,” Jolie wrote of Bertrand, who died at age 56. “When I look back to that time, I can see how much her death changed me. It was not sudden, but so much shifted inside. Losing a mother’s love and warm, soft embrace is like having someone rip away a protective blanket.”
In 2015, Jolie revealed that she had undergone preventative surgery to remove her ovaries and fallopian tubes — almost two years after undergoing a double mastectomy — and said at the time, “I know my children will never have to say, ‘Mom died of ovarian cancer.’”
In her new essay, Jolie — who shares six children with her former husband Brad Pitt — also wrote about how the decisions of her father — the famed actor Jon Voight — forced Bertrand to abandon her acting aspirations and instead focus on raising Jolie and her older brother, James Haven, at the age of 26.
“When my father had an affair, it changed her life. It set her dream of family life ablaze. But she still loved being a mother,” Jolie wrote.
The Oscar-winning actress also said that, several years after her mother’s death, she got a small tattoo of the letter “W” on her right palm. The letter, she noted, signified the Rolling Stones song “Winter,” which Jolie recalled Bertrand would croon to her as a baby.
“As the ‘W’ faded on my hand, so did that feeling of home and protection,” she wrote. “Life has taken many turns. I’ve had my own loss and seen my life take a different direction. And it hurt more than I imagined it ever would.”
The star noted that while Mother’s Day is difficult for anyone who has experienced the loss of a parent, this year’s holiday is more complicated.
“So many people have lost a parent suddenly, without being by their side, able to care for them and return their love in the way they’d always imagined,” she wrote.
“And to anyone who is grieving this Mother’s Day,” she ended the essay, “I hope you will find consolation and strength in your memories.”
