Rashida Jones Talks Losing Mom Peggy Lipton Months After Welcoming Son Isaiah

It’s been a very emotional past few years for Rashida Jones.

A few days before her 45th birthday on Thursday (February 25), the Parks & Rec actress opened up about what it was like losing her mom Peggy Lipton just a few short months after she welcomed her son Isaiah.

“This has been a very emotionally intense couple of years,” Rashida shared with NPR. “… It was sort of like back-to-back-to-back-to-back, just wrenching, pulling my heart in all different directions. … I was in grief-shock. I don’t even know if that’s a word, but I was just not in my body at all and just had a baby. I was doubly not in my body.”

Rashida and longtime partner Ezra Koenig very quietly welcomed their son Isaiah in August 2018. Eight months later in May 2019, Rashida‘s mom Peggy died at the age of 72 after a battle with cancer.

“The thing that’s the craziest about birth and death is just the utter rawness of feeling,” Rashida continued. “I still feel this way, I think. It’s like something cracks in you. It’s very binary, both things — becoming a mother and losing my mother — like, there’s my life before and there’s my life after. And strangely, there’s something that’s not recognizable before those two things happened.”

Rashida added, “It’s just this utter rawness of emotion where it doesn’t matter where I am, what I’m doing. If I’m overwhelmed by that grief or that joy, that’s it. I have to feel that thing. I can’t suppress it. I can’t run away from it. It’s just there.”