Minka Kelly Says Becoming a Mom Someday 'Would Be a Wonderful Gift If the Time Comes'
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Raised by her single mom who worked as an exotic dancer, Kelly is releasing her new memoir Tell Me Everything on May 2
In her upcoming memoir, Tell Me Everything, Minka Kelly opens up for the first time about her traumatic childhood — watching her mom Maureen, who died of cancer in 2008, try to make ends meet as she faced addiction and poverty.
"My childhood was colorful and chaotic, unstable and inconsistent, unpredictable and hard a lot of the times," Kelly, 42, tells PEOPLE in this week's issue. "But the silver lining is that it made me a very adaptable person."
Performing as an exotic dancer at Crazy Girls strip club in L.A., Maureen would often take her daughter along with her to work.
"If she made a lot of money that night, we'd go grocery shopping at 2 a.m.," Kelly recalls. "I spent a lot of my youth wishing my mom was something she wasn't, wishing she was like the other moms. I only was able to really appreciate how special she was when I got much older. In fact when it was maybe a little too late."
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
The former Friday Night Lights star wrote her memoir with the hope that it helps others who "might have complicated relationships with their mothers, feel less alone," she says. "And also to know that we don't have to be a victim of our circumstance."
While she doesn't name any of her past romantic partners, which include Chris Evans, John Mayer and Trevor Noah among others, in her book, Kelly does reveal she had hopes of starting her own family but had a miscarriage.
"I've learned that I have operated in a lot of my relationships as a scared 16-year-old girl," she says. "Most of the time these relationships reveal the parts in us that need healing. You recreate the chaos that you might have experienced in your childhood because you go to what's familiar and you'll do it over and over again until you become aware of it and do what it takes to heal. So I'm a work in progress, I think like a lot of women out there."
While marriage isn't a must for her ("I wouldn't say no but I don't have a blueprint of it really working out," she says), Kelly "would still love to be a mom."
"To have my own kids would be a wonderful gift if the time comes," she says.
Looking back, she now sees Maureen as "the most beautiful, free-spirited, big-hearted, deeply loving human I've ever known," the actress shares. "She was very childlike and playful and a lot of fun, and that's how I remember her. I probably would've described her differently when I was younger, but in hindsight, they become angels."
Tell Me Everything will be on bookshelves May 2.
For more of Kelly's exclusive interview, pick up this week's issue of PEOPLE.
For more People news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter!
Read the original article on People.
