How Goldie Sees The World

(CBS)  From "Laugh In" to "Private Benjamin" to "First Wives Club," Goldie Hawn has been one of America's favorite actresses for close to four decades. Along the way, she's learned a great deal, and hopes to share that wisdom with her new memoir "A Lotus Grows In The Mud."

Click here to read an excerpt.

Written with journalist Wendy Holden, Hawn shares a very personal look at moments both private and powerful and the ways these moments have helped carry her through life.

When she was a child, Hawn tells The Early Show co-anchor Hannah Storm, her mom asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, and her answer was to be happy.

"That was kind of the main purpose to living," she says, "So my quest in life has really been, how do you do that? I felt obviously like everybody else, a lot of pain. But it's really been an interesting journey to try to hold on to that and how you do it."

In a "60 Minutes" interview with Mike Wallace, for example, she notes how today she is happy that she has an "ugly girl personality."

By writing her book, Hawn says her aim is not teach readers how to live their lives but just to give something back.

"I'm not a teacher," Hawn says, "I felt that I lived a certain way and it would be fun to share that. It's why I didn't write an autobiography, because it's not interesting to explain myself in any way, or to try to tell people what I did right or wrong, and sort of give insights into other people and behavior. Not interesting. But I just learned so much. So I felt that that would be an interesting sort of way to present this story - little stories - and then afterwards, I ponder what I've learned. Not a book to tell what you to do or how to live. So I want to clarify this is not that kind of book.

She writes about falling in love with Kurt Russell: "I couldn't imagine how, approaching my mid-thirties with a demanding job and, by now, celebrity status, I could ever meet someone who would be prepared to take me on, with all my baggage. More important, I feared I would never find someone who would love my children as much as I do, and give them a normal family life. But I was wrong. A miracle happened. Kurt Russell was sent to us by God."

And she offers her philosophy on marriage and why after being together for 22 years, they are still not married. Hawn tells Storm if you don't pay attention to the relation in a busy life, it is easy to lose sight of what you have.

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