--- title: Katherine Heigl on Being a Working Mom: 'My Priorities Were Messed Up' description: The actress explains why she quit 'Grey's Anatomy' to spend time with her family canonical: https://time.com/3086536/katherine-heigl-mom/ author: Eliana Dockterman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-08-06T16:15:38.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T08:55:47.519Z og:title: Katherine Heigl on Being a Working Mom: 'My Priorities Were Messed Up' og:description: The actress explains why she quit 'Grey's Anatomy' to spend time with her family og:url: https://time.com/3086536/katherine-heigl-mom/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt81fbe9c062a81714/69869e95810bbb5654c92e89/461830435.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2556 og:image:height: 1438 og:image:alt: "The Nut Job" - Los Angeles Premiere - Arrivals og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Katherine Heigl on Being a Working Mom: 'My Priorities Were Messed Up' twitter:description: The actress explains why she quit 'Grey's Anatomy' to spend time with her family twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt81fbe9c062a81714/69869e95810bbb5654c92e89/461830435.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Katherine Heigl on Being a Working Mom: 'My Priorities Were Messed Up' > Sponsored content. 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Worth Your Time is TIME's culture newsletter, published Tuesdays and Saturdays to 40,000 subscribers as of August 2026. #### Who writes TIME's culture recommendations? Culture editor Eliza Berman writes Worth Your Time, drawing on TIME's critics and culture desk. #### Is Worth Your Time free? Yes. It is a free newsletter available at time.com/newsletters.  by [Eliana Dockterman](https://time.com/author/eliana-dockterman/)  ## Eliana Dockterman Correspondent Aug 6, 2014 4:15 PM UTC  Actress Katherine Heigl and daughter Naleigh arrive at the Los Angeles premiere of "The Nut Job" at Regal Cinemas L.A. Live on January 11, 2014 in Los Angeles, California. Actress Katherine Heigl and daughter Naleigh arrive at the Los Angeles premiere of "The Nut Job" at Regal Cinemas L.A. Live on January 11, 2014 in Los Angeles, California. Gregg DeGuire—WireImage  by [Eliana Dockterman](https://time.com/author/eliana-dockterman/)  ## Eliana Dockterman Correspondent Aug 6, 2014 4:15 PM UTC Katherine Heigl vented some of her frustrations about being a working mom in an [interview](http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/family/celebrity-interviews/katherine-heigl??src=rss) in the September issue of _Good Housekeeping_. “I felt like my priorities were messed up,” Heigl said of the period when she was shooting movies, the ABC show _Grey’s Anatomy_ and trying to raise her young daughter all at once. “I was putting so much time and energy into just my work, but I was raised \[to believe\] that family comes first.” Heigl and her husband, musician Josh Kelley, adopted their daughter Naleigh from South Korea in 2009\. The adoption process can be long and complicated, and Naleigh arrived earlier than the couple expected, just as Katherine was beginning to shoot a movie for three months in Atlanta. “I would come home angry and frustrated that I’d missed everything with my kid that day,” she says. “I didn’t get to wake her up from her nap, or do bath time or bedtime. I’d have to sneak into her room and kiss her when she was sleeping, hoping not to wake her up.” Heigl decided to take a leave from _Grey’s_ and then soon after permanently quit the show. She and her husband adopted another daughter, Adalaide, from Louisiana in 2012, at which point Heigl was staying at home in Utah full-time with the exception of a few short movie shoots. “We had big dreams of expanding our family, moving to the mountains and having a quieter life,” Heigl says. Heigl is now back at work: she will return to TV this fall as the star of NBC’s _State of Affairs_. \[[_Good Housekeeping_](http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/family/celebrity-interviews/katherine-heigl??src=rss)\] ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3086536/katherine-heigl-mom/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3086536/katherine-heigl-mom/"},"headline":"Katherine Heigl on Being a Working Mom: 'My Priorities Were Messed Up'","datePublished":"2014-08-06T16:15:38.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T08:55:47.519Z","description":"The actress explains why she quit Grey's Anatomy to spend time with her family","url":"https://time.com/3086536/katherine-heigl-mom/","keywords":["Living","Parenting"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt81fbe9c062a81714/69869e95810bbb5654c92e89/461830435.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Eliana Dockterman","jobTitle":"Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/eliana-dockterman/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt81fbe9c062a81714/69869e95810bbb5654c92e89/461830435.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"\"The Nut Job\" - Los Angeles Premiere - Arrivals","caption":"\"The Nut Job\" - Los Angeles Premiere - Arrivals","creditText":"Gregg DeGuire—WireImage","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-living/","name":"Living"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3086536/katherine-heigl-mom/","name":"Katherine Heigl on Being a Working Mom: 'My Priorities Were Messed Up'"}}]}] ```