Hayden Panettiere is setting the record straight about her decision to give over full custody of her daughter, Kaya, to her ex-fiancé, Wladimir Klitschko, in 2018. The Heroes actor appeared on Jay Shetty’s On Purpose podcast on Monday, where she got candid about the layered feelings she still has over the moment Klitschko requested Kaya, who was 2 years old at the time, to live full-time with him in Europe.
The idea that anybody would think that I would just give away my child and be OK with it is heartbreaking. Couldn’t be further from the truth, she explained. I was struggling with mental health and anxiety and the postpartum depression and having to axe my way through it and just feeling like I completely lost myself.
She went on to note: When that first happened, I did not have a good reaction to it. I went, like, mother lion. I would’ve burnt the world down for my child, so that was incredibly difficult ― the fact that my child wasn’t going to be with me all day, every day, you can’t put words to it.
Relationship Background
Panettiere and Klitschko, a former professional boxer who hails from Ukraine, dated from about 2009 to 2018. In 2015, Panettiere voluntarily entered a treatment facility to help with postpartum depression. At the time, she also had a starring role in the musical drama series Nashville, which meant that Kaya was spending most of her time in Europe with Klitschko.
She had family, she had friends, she had extracurricular activities, she already had a beautiful life and she understood the languages and was starting to speak them, Panettiere said. By the time I finally got healthy, I felt like it would have been unfair and selfish of me to try to pull her out, away from this life that she had been creating, this life that she had been living.
Current Relationship with Daughter
In hindsight, Panettiere believes she and Klitschko made the right decision regarding their daughter, who is now 11. We talk about really deep things. We have a really intense, incredible bond, she said. I know that she knows that she has two parents who would do anything in the world to make sure that she is happy and healthy, mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually. She in no way feels abandoned, and that’s something that I’ve made sure to stay on top of and be very aware of.
Panettiere delves further into her experiences with motherhood ― as well as other aspects of her private life ― in a new memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, released this week.
