Jennifer Aniston reveals for the first time that she underwent IVF: ‘It was a challenging road for me’

For years (and years and years and years), it seems like the entire population of earth has speculated over Jennifer Aniston and her fertility at one point or another—despite it being absolutely no one’s business whatsoever. Now, the legendary actress is revealing for the first time that she did undergo IVF treatments and struggled to get pregnant for years.

In a new interview with Allure, Jennifer Aniston shares the emotional fertility journey that led her to in vitro fertilization and other tactics to try to get pregnant and how now, at 53 years old, she’s finally at peace with that journey.

Before opening up about pregnancy, the actress says that she’s grateful for all of the hard things she had to endure to get to where she is now.

“I was trying to get pregnant. It was a challenging road for me, the baby-making road,” Aniston explains, referencing a period in her life several years ago.

“All the years and years and years of speculation… It was really hard. I was going through IVF, drinking Chinese teas, you name it,” she says. “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.”

Related: Whether or not Jennifer Aniston has children or is ‘heartbroken’ is none of our business

If you’re an adult millennial or older, you absolutely remember Jennifer Aniston’s gorgeous face and perfect hair splashed across every tabloid magazine under headlines like “Does Jen Have A Baby Bump?” and “A Baby For Jen” and ‘Yes! I Am Having A Baby.” This went on for ages and ages, through her marriages to both Brad Pitt and Justin Theroux. All the while, Jennifer Aniston was struggling to become pregnant in real life—and no one ever knew.

But that didn’t stop the press and every rando on the street from assuming she didn’t want to have kids because she was too “selfish.”

“I just cared about my career,” she said, discussing the inaccurate but persistent narrative at the time. “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.”

In 2016, Aniston wrote an op-ed for Huffpo where she finally addressed the years of gossip and rumors and put a lot of speculation to rest. She slammed the media for its crappy treatment of women and how we place a woman’s value on her marital and maternal status—and how disgusting that is.

Related: Kristen Wiig says IVF was hardest experience of her life

“If I am some kind of symbol to some people out there, then clearly I am an example of the lens through which we, as a society, view our mothers, daughters, sisters, wives, female friends and colleagues,” she wrote at the time. “The objectification and scrutiny we put women through is absurd and disturbing. The way I am portrayed by the media is simply a reflection of how we see and portray women in general, measured against some warped standard of beauty.”

In her interview with Allure, Aniston explains that after years of enduring infertility and public fodder and endless speculation about her womb, she can finally let all of that stress go.

“I have zero regrets,” she says. “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.”