Trigger warning – this article discusses infertility
Jennifer Aniston has been open about her decades-long struggle with fertility, speaking publicly about her 20-year journey in recent years to help others going through similar situations.
“There’s a point where it’s, like, out of my control,” the Friends actress recalled this week during an episode of Dax Shepard’s podcast, Armchair Expert. “There’s literally nothing I can do about it. It just wasn’t in the plan, whatever the plan was.
“People say, ‘But you can adopt,’” she added of her options, before admitting: “[but] I don’t want to adopt. I want my own DNA in a little person. That’s the only way, selfish or not, whatever that is, I’ve wanted it.
“It’s very emotional, especially when they say ‘that’s it,'” she later reflected. “Because there is a weird moment when that happens.”
Now 56, Aniston reveals that she has come to terms with not having children, telling host Dax Shepard: “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.”
Aniston has previously spoken out about the “false narrative” around her relationship with motherhood, setting the record straight about her fertility struggles in 2022.
“[There was a] narrative that I was just selfish. I just cared about my career,” Aniston stated in an interview that year with Allure. “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.”
“They didn’t know my story, or what I’d been going through over the past 20 years to try to pursue a family, because I don’t go out there and tell them my medical woes,” she added in a recent interview for Harper’s Bazaar. “That’s not anybody’s business. But there comes a point when you can’t not hear it – the narrative about how I won’t have a baby, won’t have a family, because I’m selfish, a workaholic. It does affect me – I’m just a human being. We’re all human beings.”
If you have been affected by anything discussed in this article, The Fertility Foundationcan provide support to those seeking advice.