Reese Witherspoon Vulnerably Shares That She Fell Apart and “Broke” a Year Ago: “I Cried and Cried”

Reese Witherspoon at an event — (Image credit: Getty Images)

Reese Witherspoon was extraordinarily and bravely candid and vulnerable as she opened up about personal challenges she faced a year ago, saying that she “cried and cried” after feeling like she was a robot that “broke,” E! News reports.

“I’ve been trying really hard to find balance outside of work,” Witherspoon said at her company Hello Sunshine’s Shine Away event in Los Angeles yesterday. “I’m a person who fills my schedule with busyness so that I feel less alone or less nervous or less unsettled.”

Witherspoon—who settled her divorce from Jim Toth in August after announcing their split in March—said that, while her work has always been a major part of her life, “I started to realize that isn’t going to work for me,” she said. “About a year ago, I was like, ‘I was a robot, and the robot broke.’ I cried and cried.”

Witherspoon said she texted her friend, Tracee Ellis Ross, to help process it all: “It actually makes me feel very vulnerable sharing that with y’all, but I think it’s important,” Witherspoon said, as she teared up onstage. “We hold up so much for so many. My beautiful friend Cleo Wade just wrote this gorgeous poem…about the glue in people’s lives. And sometimes you are the glue in everybody’s life, whether it’s work or being a mom or being a partner, but who is holding you together, you know? It’s really important to remember.”

Of Wade’s poem, Witherspoon said she “burst into tears” upon reading it “because I didn’t feel like I was taking very good care of myself, and I wasn’t asking other people for help.”

Witherspoon’s plate is enormously full: in addition to being a mother of three, she is an actress, a producer, a philanthropist, and the founder of media company Hello Sunshine, her clothing line, Draper James, and Reese’s Book Club. Now, she said, she wants to share her lessons learned so that hopefully the path will be easier for others that can learn from her struggles. “I feel like I’ve learned a lot,” she said. “Because I did the work—the hard work—in my early twenties and reading every book and every self-help book and going to therapy and really trying to understand myself and forgive the parts of myself that were broken and the parts of myself where I felt like a failure, because it was a huge part of it.”

She added “Instead of thinking of it as a failure, I think, ‘Gosh, I’ve learned so much from that moment.’ And I don’t blame others, I just reward myself for the hard things that little Reese went through.”

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Rachel Burchfield is a writer, editor, and podcaster whose primary interests are fashion and beauty, society and culture, and, most especially, the British Royal Family and other royal families around the world. She serves as Marie Claire’s Senior Celebrity and Royals Editor and has also contributed to publications like Allure, Cosmopolitan, Elle, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, InStyle, People, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and W, among others. Before taking on her current role with Marie Claire, Rachel served as its Weekend Editor and later Royals Editor. She is the cohost of Podcast Royal, a show that was named a top five royal podcast by The New York Times. A voracious reader and lover of books, Rachel also hosts I’d Rather Be Reading, which spotlights the best current nonfiction books hitting the market and interviews the authors of them. Rachel frequently appears as a media commentator, and she or her work has appeared on outlets like NBC’s Today Show, ABC’s Good Morning America, CNN, and more.