Jennifer Aniston is sharing her very personal IVF story for the very first time.
In a candid new interview with Allure while discussing her hair-care line LolaVie, the actress opened up about the painful pregnancy rumors that plagued her for years, revealing that behind the scrutiny was a secret struggle with infertility she was battling.
"I was trying to get pregnant. It was a challenging road for me, the baby-making road," Aniston told the outlet.
"All the years and years and years of speculation… It was really hard," she noted. "I was going through IVF, drinking Chinese teas, you name it. I was throwing everything at it. I would have given anything if someone had said to me, 'Freeze your eggs. Do yourself a favor.' You just don't think it."
Not helping her troubles was her split from husband Brad Pitt in 2005 after 5 years or marriage and the hurtful assumptions that she chose career over kids.
"It was absolute lies," said Aniston of the "narrative that I was just selfish... I just cared about my career. And God forbid a woman is successful and doesn't have a child. And the reason my husband left me, why we broke up and ended our marriage, was because I wouldn't give him a kid."
Aniston didn't give any timeline to her IVF journey, Allure noting that it was simply "several years ago." But now at 53, she said she has "zero regrets" to how things worked out.
"Here I am today. The ship has sailed," she said, adding, "I actually feel a little relief now because there is no more, 'Can I?' I don't have to think about that anymore."
"I would say my late 30s, 40s, I'd gone through really hard s—, and if it wasn't for going through that, I would've never become who I was meant to be," said Aniston. "That's why I have such gratitude for all those s—ty things. Otherwise, I would've been stuck being this person that was so fearful, so nervous, so unsure of who they were. And now, I don't f—ing care."
Said Aniston: "I feel the best in who I am today, better than I ever did in my 20s or 30s even, or my mid-40s."
This isn't the first time Aniston has discussed the impact gossip about her personal life has had on her.
Back in 2016, the Friends alum wrote a scathing essay back for the Huffington Post addressing false pregnancy reports at the time, saying, "For the record, I am not pregnant. What I am is fed up."
"Here's where I come out on this topic: We are complete with or without a mate, with or without a child. We get to decide for ourselves what is beautiful when it comes to our bodies. That decision is ours and ours alone," she wrote. "Let's make that decision for ourselves and for the young women in this world who look to us as examples. Let's make that decision consciously, outside of the tabloid noise. We don't need to be married or mothers to be complete. We get to determine our own 'happily ever after' for ourselves."
Added Aniston at the time, "I have grown tired of being part of this narrative. Yes, I may become a mother some day, and since I'm laying it all out there, if I ever do, I will be the first to let you know. But I'm not in pursuit of motherhood because I feel incomplete in some way."
She also spoke about the topic to The Hollywood Reporter last December, saying she "used to take it all very personally" at the time. "It's like, 'You have no clue what's going with me personally, medically, why I can't … can I have kids?' They don't know anything, and it was really hurtful and just nasty," she said.
It's only continued in the age of social media noted Aniston, who was also wed to Justin Theroux from 2015-2017.
"What the tabloids and the media did to people's personal lives back then, regular people are doing now [on social media]," The Morning Show star said. "Now you've got social media. It's almost like the media handed over the sword to any Joe Schmo sitting behind a computer screen to be a troll or whatever they call them and bully people in comment sections. So it's just sort of changed hands in a way. And I don't know why there's such a cruel streak in society. I often wonder what they get off on."
