Katherine Heigl Opens Up About Her Initial Struggle To Bond With Her Daughter

Celebrity mom Katherine Heigl opens up about trying to bond with her daughter, Naleigh Kelley.

Katherine and her husband, musician Josh Kelley, adopted their daughter back in 2009 and she says that it was not an instant connection, like she had hoped it would be.

“People are always talking about the strong bond between mother and daughter, this magical connection – but we didn’t have that.” She says that period was “the hardest time in my life. I fought incredibly hard for my daughter to accept me as mother. Her rejection almost broke my heart.”

Katherine was also working full time on ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ and filming movies, which meant that the parent/child bonding going on was between Naleigh and Josh, which hurt just the same: “At first I blamed myself and thought I was a bad mother. It took a while before I could admit to myself that the lack of trust had nothing to do with me.”

The busy actress decided to cut back on her work schedule to focus on her new daughter and it helped speed things along. Katherine says that she and Naleigh are extremely close now and she looks forward to taking her back to Korea to visit her birth country. “I’d like to fly to South Korea with the family, to show her the country that she comes from.”

Photos by Wenn.com