Reese Witherspoon is getting real about the “really hard journey” of being a working mom in Hollywood.
The actress — whose career took off when her eldest child was about 2 — took to Instagram Thursday to share a seven-slide carousel featuring photos with her daughter, Ava Phillippe, 25, and her sons, Deacon 21, and Tennessee Toth, 12.
“Someone asked me what raising three kids and building a career in Hollywood looked like,” she wrote atop a family photo featuring all three of her children.
“It looked like spending a lot of time in trailers together,” the “Legally Blonde” star explained on the next slide, which showed Tennessee smiling next to his mom.
“It looked like always being on the road together,” she added on the following slide, which showed her in the backseat of a car with Ava and Deacon.
Witherspoon, 49, even poked fun at herself when she noted, “It looked like my kids constantly giving me career advice!” The accompanying picture was a screenshot of Deacon texting her, “Mom you butt-dialed an instagram live.”
Getting candid about the struggles, too, the Oscar winner shared on the next slide, “It looked really hard sometimes. I’d cry working 14 to 17 hours, sometimes all night long and still woke up early for carpool. I was deliriously tired.”
Despite her exhaustion, Witherspoon made sure she always tried “to say something positive” when she got home from work so her kids would know her work was “meaningful” to her and “could be fun!”
The “Morning Show” star concluded her carousel by saying that “even though it was challenging,” her children gave her “perspective” about what’s “important in life.”
She emphasized that “nothing was better than getting to come home and hug them and hear about their day!”
Witherspoon shares Ava and Deacon with her first husband, Ryan Phillippe, to whom she was married from June 1999 to June 2008.
The Golden Globe winner co-parents Tennessee with her estranged husband, Jim Toth, to whom she was married from March 2011 to August 2023.