Katherine Heigl thinks talking to her daughter about racism will "break a piece of her beautiful divine spirit".
The 41-year-old actress adopted her eight-year-old daughter Adalaide at birth in 2012, and has said she is struggling to find the words to properly inform her of the protests currently taking place across America following the untimely death of George Floyd.
George died last week after a police officer – who has since been arrested on charges of third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter, and sacked from the force – knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes, and Katherine says she doesn’t know how to explain that to her young daughter.
Writing on Instagram, the ‘Ugly Truth’ star said: "I can’t sleep. And when I do I wake with a single thought in my head. How will I tell Adalaide? How will I explain the unexplainable? How can I protect her? How can I break a piece of her beautiful divine spirit to do so?
"I can’t sleep. I lay in my bed in the dark and weep for every mother of a beautiful divine black child who has to extinguish a piece of their beloved baby’s spirit to try to keep them alive in a country that has too many sleeping soundly. Eyes squeezed shut. Images and cries and pleas and pain banished from their minds. White bubbles strong and intact. But I lay awake. Finally. Painfully. (sic)"
Katherine – who also has adopted daughter Naleigh, 11, and biological son Joshua, three, with her husband Josh Kelley – went on to say she feels "hopeless", but knows she must speak out for the sake of her brood.
She added: "My white bubble though always with me now begins to bleed. Because I have a black daughter. Because I have a Korean daughter. Because I have a Korean sister and nephews and niece. It has taken me far too long to truly internalize the reality of the abhorrent, evil despicable truth of racism.
"And now I weep. Because what should have changed by now, by then, forever ago still is. Hopelessness is seeping in. Fear that there is nothing I can do, like a slow moving poison, is spreading through me. Then I look at my daughters. My sister. My nephews and niece. George Floyd. Ahmaud Arbery. Breonna Taylor. The hundreds, thousands millions more we haven’t even heard about. I look and the fear turns to something else. The sorrow warms and then bursts into flames of rage. (sic)"