Sarah Drew has opened up about one of the hardest times in her life. She also shared the advice her father gave her that helped change everything.
The 45-year-old actress is best known for playing Dr. April Kepner on Grey’s Anatomy. She sat down with Fox News for an interview published on May 23. She spoke honestly about the panic attacks she had during her first pregnancy. She said she nearly lost herself to anxiety before her father stepped in.
Sarah did not hold back. She described becoming a mother as one of the scariest decisions she ever made. “One of the biggest, scariest risks that I leaped into was choosing to become a mom,” she said. “I was probably about six months pregnant, and I had been having panic attacks.”
The fear went deeper than just the pregnancy. She worried she was not selfless enough to be a good mom. She feared she was too self-absorbed. She even worried she might resent her children for needing so much from her. “I was worried I was going to screw up,” she admitted.
The anxiety kept growing. She tried to handle it on her own but could not. So she reached out to her father, Charles Drew, and asked him for help. “I remember writing to my dad and just saying, do you have any advice or any wisdom or any Scripture that you can point me toward? Because it’s really overwhelming,” Sarah recalled.
The Advice That Made the Difference
Her father did not give her a long speech. He gave her one simple idea. He told her to practice what he called “aggressive gratitude.”
The word aggressive surprised her. Most people think of gratitude as something soft and quiet. Her father explained why he used that word on purpose.
He said gratitude is not always easy to reach. Sometimes your mind is stuck in a dark spiral. In those moments, you have to push yourself toward gratitude. You have to choose it on purpose. That effort is what makes it aggressive.
Sarah said that idea stayed with her. It gave her something real to hold onto when anxiety tried to take over.
Sarah shares two children with her husband, Dr. Peter Lanfer. Their son is Micah Emmanuel and their daughter is Hannah Mali Rose. She has always spoken warmly about her family in public.
Her story is one many people can relate to. Big life changes bring big fears. Asking for help is not a sign of weakness. And sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is choose, on purpose, to focus on what is good.
