Celina Jaitly spent her son Arthur's ninth birthday writing to him instead of being with him. The actress posted a long note on Instagram on Wednesday, telling Arthur she wishes she could "hold you, kiss you & make your favourite pani puri today," and admitting she did not imagine, even a year ago, that she would be marking this birthday from a distance.

The post arrives months after Celina filed a divorce petition against husband Peter Haag in November 2025 under the Domestic Violence Act, alleging physical, emotional, verbal and sexual abuse, according to Bollywood Hungama. Those remain allegations in a legal filing, not a settled finding, but they form the backdrop to what she wrote about her children on Wednesday.

Celina has three sons with Haag — Arthur, Winston and Viraaj, and a fourth, Shamsher, Arthur's twin, who died soon after birth from a congenital heart defect. Much of the note is addressed to that loss as much as to the birthday itself. She asked Arthur to visit Shamsher's grave "like we always did," and wrote that she prayed to Ma Bagla Mukhi to watch over him. She also went back to the pregnancy itself, recalling that she held back tears at her own father's funeral while both twins were still in her womb.

What stands out is how directly she addressed the separation to a nine-year-old. "I write to your daddy every day, asking to connect with you 3, but have not received a response," she wrote, adding that arranging contact "is for the grown-ups to work out" and that there is "nothing you need to fix." She was careful, repeatedly, to tell Arthur the split isn't his fault and that he doesn't have to choose between his parents.

She also used the post to answer something that appears to have weighed on her. Questions about being away from Arthur as a newborn. Celina wrote that she had gone to be with her mother, who was in the final stages of cancer, and was not abandoning her son. "My love for you was with you every moment," she wrote, closing with a promise that she would come running to all three boys the moment they asked.

Bollywood Hungama, which first reported the note, said it has drawn considerable attention as a rare public window into what a custody separation looks like from the mother's side, even as the underlying divorce case moves through court. Neither Celina nor Haag has issued a joint statement on the children's care arrangements, and there's no word yet on when the case is next listed. For now, what's public is a mother's letter to a son she says she hasn't been allowed to speak to.