Alba opened up about the importance of healthy communication with her daughter during a recent conference.
Actress and entrepreneur Jessica Alba recently opened up about attending therapy with her 10-year-old daughter, Honor, to encourage healthy communication and to become a “better mother.”
Alba was at Her Campus Media’s eighth annual Her Conference at Wanderlust Hollywood last Saturday (June 1), where she discussed women in the workplace, running The Honest Company which she co-founded in 2011, and growing up in Hollywood as a young actress with Mexican roots.
The mother-of-three talked about going to therapy with her 10-year-old daughter, Honor Marie Warren, to “learn to be a better mother to her and communicate better with her.”
This is a far different approach to how she was raised, she admits.
“I didn’t grow up in an environment where you talked about this stuff, and it was just like shut it down and keep it moving,” said Alba, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “So I find a lot of inspiration just in talking to my kids.”
“Some people think, like in my family, you talk to a priest and that’s it. I don’t really feel comfortable talking to him about my feelings,” she said.
Alba is often candid about her life, parenting style and approach to running her business.
Last month, she revealed the impact that coming of age in Hollywood had on her. “I was meant to feel ashamed if I tempted men. Then I stopped eating a lot when I became an actress. I made myself look more like a boy so I wouldn’t get as much attention. I went through a big tomboy phase,” she said during a panel at the Goop Health summit in Los Angeles on May 18.
Actresses Taraji P. Henson, Olivia Wilde and Busy Philipps also sat on the panel.
Being a young woman in Hollywood, Alba became guarded and became insecure about her womanhood.
“In Hollywood, you’re really preyed upon,” Alba said. “They see a young girl, and they just want to touch you inappropriately or talk to you inappropriately or think that they’re allowed to be aggressive with you in a way.”
She continued, “So, then I like created this pretty intense ‘don’t f— with me’ [attitude]. I had to create a harder shell about being a woman.”
Motherhood allowed her to stop being ashamed of her body, she said. “[After Honor was born] I was like, oh this is what these boobies are meant to do! Feed a kid! And that was the dopest s— I’d ever done. So, I came into my body as a woman finally and I stopped being ashamed of myself.”
