Jennifer Aniston Opens Up About Trying Every Option to Get Pregnant

For the 1 in 4 women dealing with infertility, the time spent every day trying to get pregnant can feel like a lonely, invisible battle. In hopes of bringing this journey into the light, Friends actress and 90s icon Jennifer Aniston is opening up about her own unseen efforts to try to get pregnant.

In a new cover interview with Allure, Aniston reveals that she spent years trying to have a child, “It was a challenging road for me, the baby-making road,” Aniston said frankly. “All the years and years and years of speculation… It was really hard.”

Like many women, Aniston said she explored every option for getting pregnant. “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.”

The Morning Show actress says that even after all her efforts, she has “zero regrets.” “I actually feel a little relief now because there is no more, ‘Can I? Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.’ I don’t have to think about that anymore,” she added.

At 53 years old, Aniston says she can be honest about the pain she felt throughout her journey. Especially the insult that came from years of tabloids speculating whether she was pregnant or not and why she wasn’t having kids.

Aniston says the “narrative that I was just selfish” was hard to deal with. “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. It was absolute lies. I don’t have anything to hide at this point.”

During the height of the media scrutiny, Aniston said she got so frustrated that she wrote an op-ed for the Huffington Post asking the media to lay off her and women in general. “I was like, ‘I’ve just got to write this because it’s so maddening, and I’m not superhuman to the point where I can’t let it penetrate and hurt,’” Aniston recounted.

Despite all of this, the Hollywood star says she has found peace and happiness in it all. Later in the piece, she talks about how she’s learned to let go of resentment and anger, “taking the darker things that happen in our lives, the not-so-happy moments, and trying to find places to honor them because of what they have given to us.”

If you are dealing with some not-so-happy moments in your pregnancy journey right now, know you aren’t alone. Read more about these 18 celebrities who have also struggled with infertility, and check out these tips for making things a little less stressful.