Drew Barrymore opens up about the lessons she learned throughout her troubled childhood and how she finally found her happily ever after. Subscribe now for this exclusive interview, only in PEOPLE! 
 
 Being a mom is everything to Drew Barrymore. 
 
 Her life with her two young daughters, Olive, 3, and Frankie, 18 months, and husband, art consultant Will Kopelman, 38, is “is an abundance,” she tells PEOPLE in this week’s cover story. “It’s perfect and totally imperfect.” 
 
 Yet after Barrymore gave birth to Frankie, she sensed something might be a little off. “I didn’t have postpartum the first time so I didn’t understand it because I was like, ‘I feel great!’ The second time, I was like, ‘Oh, whoa, I see what people talk about now. I understand,’ ” she says. “It’s a different type of overwhelming with the second. I really got under the cloud.” 
 
 Between work — her new book, Wildflower, hits shelves Oct. 27 and her next film, Miss You Already, hits theaters next month — and motherhood, Barrymore, 40, felt pulled in every direction. 
 
 “I just got right on the idea of, where do I need to be the most? Fifty-fifty would be ideal but life doesn’t work like that. Life is messy,” the actress says. “It was just really challenging and I felt overwhelmed. I made a lot of decisions and I definitely changed my work life to suit my parenthood.” 
 
 
 
 Dave Benett/Getty 
 
 While her postpartum was “short-lived, probably six months,” Barrymore is grateful for the experience, which constantly reminds her to stay present in the moment. 
 
 “It’s really important. I was in the kids’ class with Frankie and Olive this morning and I started fretting about some piece of work news that was just stressful,” she recalls. “You know, in like the Broadway Babies class and it’s the one-hit wonders day, and they’re singing I don’t even know what song, and we’re all doing our lollipop drums and I just thought, ‘Save it until after class.’ One thing at a time.” 
 
 As the creator of Flower Beauty, Flower Eyewear and Barrymore Wines, the actress says it’s important to her for her daughters to see her working as a good thing. 
 
 “Putting a negative stigma on work is a go-to. It makes us feel like it proves to our children that we don’t want to work, we’d rather be with you,” Barrymore adds. “I want them to see that work can be a good, positive, fun, happy thing. I’ve worked since I was 11½ months old so I have to be able to work, too. But I have to put them first. I don’t know if it’s good enough for anyone but I’m doing my best.” 
 
 For more of our exclusive interview with Barrymore — in which she reveals her own memories of childhood and the happiness she’s found as a wife and mother — pick up this week’s issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday. 
 
 — Julie Jordan ||||| Kendra Wilkinson reveals she checked into a mental hospital at age 15 for having 'suicidal' thoughts 
 
 Holden/WireImage Kendra Wilksin said she began her downward spiral with drugs at age 13. 
 
 Long before Kendra Wilkinson entered the spotlight and became known as a bubbly blond Playboy model, she experienced some troubled times as a teenager. 
 
 In the new "E! True Hollywood Story" about the reality star, Wilkinson admits dabbling in drugs and self-mutilating during her short 24 years of life. 
 
 She said she was "about 13" when she had her first experience with cocaine after her friends introduced her to "this white stuff." 
 
 "I started feeling pretty good," Wilkinson said. "That was the start of my drug days." 
 
 By the time she was 15, Wilkinson was abusing drugs and was at one point "feeling suicidal" and "cutting myself." 
 
 "I had so much pain that I just wanted to die," she revealed. "It wasn't that I was trying to die, it was that the pain took away from my pain inside." 
 
 After Wilkinson admitted swallowing a "half-dozen or so medications" while at school, her mother, Patti, checked her into a secured psychiatric facility for two weeks. 
 
 "It was crazy in that place," the reality star told "THS." "We didn't see daylight. We weren't allowed outside. It was basically a jail, but it was a hospital." 
 
 Despite her family members being "scared to death," Wilkinson said the hospitalization "did not change me at all." 
 
 "I think it made me worse because in my heart I didn't want to change," she said. "People were forcing me, and that's something that does not work with me." 
 
 Wilkinson credits an instance when she almost died from a cocaine overdose as the moment that made her realize she needed to get her life together. 
 
 "I was bleeding from every hole in my body and I really thought I was going to die that night," she said. "But you know what, I survived, and I swear it was a couple of days after that that I had an epiphany. I just stopped drugs, stopped smoking cigarettes, stopped everything, and went home." 
 
 Admitting that her "devil years" were "very selfish," Wilkinson's attempt to repair her damaged relationship with her family took time. 
 
 "My mom did not take me back with open arms," she said. "I basically had to get on my knees and beg. I looked in her eyes [and said] 'I swear on my life, I am done.'" 
 
 After getting involved in sports and working a part-time job, the reformed teen found her way working at the Playboy mansion, where she ultimately met future boyfriend Hugh Hefner. 
 
 Now married to NFL star Hank Baskett and caring for their 3-month-old son, Hank IV, Wilkinson told E! Online that she's just "enjoying time" with her new family.
– Drew Barrymore opens up about her troubled childhood in a candid new interview with the Guardian, from her first days as a "party girl" at age eight to her time at age nine at Studio 54 with her mom, doing drugs and dancing with men, to her first stint in rehab at age 12. But she relapsed the following year ("When I was 13, that was probably the lowest" point in her life, she says), leading to 18 more months in a hospital. "[My parents] were pretty out there," Barrymore says. "But I realized, honestly, yeah, my mom locked me up in an institution. Boo hoo! But it did give an amazing discipline. It was like serious recruitment training and boot camp, and it was horrible and dark and very long-lived, a year and a half, but I needed it. I needed that whole insane discipline." She clarifies that, yes, it was an institution for the mentally ill. The 40-year-old Barrymore—while sipping a Corona—notes that at 14, "I was so scared of not knowing where I was going. I really had a fear that I was going to die at 25," but that "no matter how dark shit got, I always had a sense that there should be goodness. I never went all the way into darkness." Her mother "occasionally" visited her at the hospital, she says, but when she got out at 14, she became legally emancipated from her parents, at the institution's suggestion. "It was a very important thing to experience for me," she says of her hospitalization. "It was very humbling, very quieting. Maybe it was necessary, because I came out of there a more respecting person. And my parents didn’t teach me that, and life wasn’t teaching me that. I came out in a very different way ... but I still was me." Click for the full interview. (Barrymore also recently opened up about postpartum depression.)