Hayden Panettiere isn't afraid to get candid about her ups and downs — and what they have cost her.
In 2018, the Nashville alum, 38, relinquished custody of her daughter Kaya, then around four years old, in an effort to focus on rehabilitating from her struggles with addiction and postpartum depression.
She has called the experience a "living nightmare," however now she is lucky to be able to have "an incredible" relationship with both her daughter, who is now 11 years old, and her father, her ex-fiancé Wladimir Klitschko.
© Getty ImagesWhere Hayden and Wladimir stand now
Speaking with Us Weekly on May 6, Hayden maintained: "I have an incredible relationship with both of them. I'm so grateful for Wlad. We're very close, and have had a deep friendship, along with a relationship, since I met him when I was 19."
"To see that we still have this bond and the ability to coparent and show our daughter [that] even though we're not together, doesn't mean that there's a lack of love here, and it doesn't mean that you're unsafe," she continued, and gushed: "My daughter, she's just an incredible gift. She's otherworldly and so kind and so fierce and surrounded by good people, and it's incredible for me to be able to watch her thrive in areas that I struggled with growing up. She's just the best thing, all the best parts of me and Wlad.
© Getty ImagesThe former couple's custody agreement
Recalling the moment she was encouraged to hand over full custody of Kaya, Hayden also told Us: "It was a living nightmare, and I felt so out of control. There's nothing that I could do about it. There's so much of me that wanted to fight, but I had to ultimately take into consideration the most important thing, which was how this was all going to affect my daughter. Sometimes that means having to do the hardest things in the world, for their sake."
Terrifying as it was however, she had full trust in Wlad's ability as a father. "It was a living nightmare, and I felt so out of control. There's nothing that I could do about it. There's so much of me that wanted to fight, but I had to ultimately take into consideration the most important thing, which was how this was all going to affect my daughter."
"Sometimes that means having to do the hardest things in the world, for their sake," she added, though noted: "Living on separate continents made our arrangement even more challenging. Despite how I felt, it was important to always put her first. But it was a difficult thing to write about and still is a difficult thing for me to verbalize. Absolutely one of the worst days of my life, and will always be."
Wlad, 50, was born in then-Soviet Union Semipalatinsk, Now Semey, Kazakhstan, but has taken on Ukrainian nationality, and lives in the country with Kaya, where Russia's war is still raging.
© WireImageHayden's postpartum depression
Hayden has been candid about her difficult experience with postpartum depression for the last decade, speaking out about it in a 2015 appearance on LIVE with Kelly & Michael (now LIVE with Kelly & Mark). "It's something a lot of women experience. When [you're told] about postpartum depression you think it's 'I feel negative feelings towards my child, I want to injure or hurt my child' — I've never, ever had those feelings. Some women do," she explained.
Hayden continued: "But you don't realize how broad of a spectrum you can really experience that on. It's something that needs to be talked about. Women need to know that they're not alone, and that it does heal."
She also told Us, reflecting on it over ten years later: "Suddenly I was nowhere near the mom that I had sworn to myself I'd be, and that was devastating. I'm such a perfectionist in so many ways that being at least a good mother was so important to me, and such a crushing blow when I was incapable of being an even semi-decent mom, in my mind. We all want to be great parents. But we ultimately always end up making mistakes, just not maybe as many as I did."
