Jennifer Aniston moved to grew up in New York and moved to Los Angeles in 1989. She never looked back. She was happy to leave her parents’ apartment, and she is happy with the career that she has built.

Aniston is currently single, but there were big chunks of her life when she was married, first to Brad Pitt and later to Justin Theroux. She has been divorced since 2017, and she has no plans to get married again any time soon.

In an interview for Allure, Aniston spoke honestly about her thoughts on marriage (she’s open to it) and even more honestly about her thoughts on children.

Years ago, there were rumors about whether or not Aniston was pregnant and whether or not she wanted to have children. There were headlines questioning if Aniston had a baby bump or not and questioning if her marriage ended because she didn’t want children and was putting her career over starting a family.

Aniston chose this recent Allure interview to tell the truth about her failed attempts to start a family. It turns out, she really did want children. She explained, “I would say my late 30s, 40s, I’d gone through really hard shit, and if it wasn’t for going through that, I would’ve never become who I was meant to be.”

What was so hard that a famous movie star was going through? She was unsuccessfully trying to have a baby. She shared, “I was trying to get pregnant. It was a challenging road for me, the baby-making road.”

Aniston opened up about how IVF didn’t work for her and how hard that was for her to accept. She said, “I was going through IVF, drinking Chinese teas, you name it. I was throwing everything at it. I would’ve given anything if someone had said to me, ‘Freeze your eggs. Do yourself a favor.’ You just don’t think it. So here I am today. The ship has sailed.”

Now, Aniston is at the point of acceptance, realizing she’ll never have a smaller version of herself running around the house gives her “relief” a little bit because she no longer as to wonder “can I?” She said, “I don’t have to think about that anymore.”

Aniston explained that she doesn’t have anything to hide anymore. She was hiding her story about IVF, but that’s over now. She added, “I’ve spent so many years protecting my story about IVF. I’m so protective of these parts because I feel like there’s so little that I get to keep to myself. The [world] creates narratives that aren’t true, so I might as well tell the truth. I feel like I’m coming out of hibernation. I don’t have anything to hide.”

Does it surprise you that Aniston hid her journey with IVF for so long?