Drew Barrymore gets vulnerable about her past in new Instagram post

Drew Barrymore is reflecting on her 1995 Playboy cover with a new perspective as a mother of two daughters.

In a vulnerable Instagram post titled "PHONE HOME," she shared her experiences growing up in Hollywood, saying she wants to "put myself out there as a parent" and confront her past.

Barrymore recalled her unconventional childhood, stating, "I had this experience of being so out there in the world and going to adult environments and working" as a child.

She also opened up about posing for Playboy at 19, just before her 20th birthday.

“I was around plenty of hedonistic scenarios at parties and even in my own home where the viewing was of highly sensitive natures and caused me tremendous shame,” she wrote.

“We, as kids, are not meant to see these images. And, yes, I was even a big exhibitionist when I was young due to these environments I was in. I thought of it as art, and I still do not judge it.”

Barrymore continued, “But when I did a chaste artistic moment in Playboy in my early 20s, I thought it would be a magazine that was unlikely to resurface because it was paper. I never knew there would be an internet. I didn’t know so many things.”

Now, as a parent, the Drew Barrymore Show host is determined to “protect them [her kids] the way I wanted to be protected.”

Barrymore never imagined that her children would face the same issues of excess and overexposure that she did in her youth, especially with the rise of modern technology and social media.

As a result, she's hesitant to introduce smartphones to her daughters, Olive (12) and Frankie (10), saying she "never thought in my wildest dreams that kids would be in my boat of too much excess and access."

She explained that she “was emancipated at 14 years old and moved into my first apartment,” which made her feel like she “started my life over on my own terms.”

“But in a consistent message to myself, I found that there was no one to take care of me,” Barrymore continued. “My own mother was lambasted for allowing me to get so out of control. I have so much empathy for her now, because I am a mother. And none of us is perfect.”

But thanks to the kindness people have shown her throughout her life since she “was lucky enough to start engaging with people” from a young age, she now wants “to give that goodness right back in reciprocity.”

And the Charlie’s Angels star wants to do that by helping to “protect our children from being put in scenarios where they cannot always control the rhetoric of the multiple-party dynamics that get put on record on a cloud only to potentially haunt them one day.”

“I messed up in public when I was 13, and people were shocked,” Barrymore recalled of her own traumatic childhood experience. “I was on the cover of the National Enquirer and every other magazine as a washed-up tragedy. And I thought that would be my narrative forever. I wanted to disappear from the planet and never show my face again.”

“So yeah, it is also my karma and life’s work to cheer people on right back!” Barrymore added.

“We all fall and rise. Over and over. Life’s roller coaster. And what a beautiful ride it is. But here on earth is a timed-out journey. We must make the best of it and take care of each other in the process,” she concluded.