Jordana Brewster opens up about infertility, surrogacy and her path to parenthood

If you’re having trouble getting pregnant, Jordana Brewster wants you to know that you’re not alone, mama.

The Fast and the Furious actress is getting candid about her path to parenthood via surrogacy.

“When I decided to have children, I thought it was going to be a really easy journey,” Brewster told Motherly in an exclusive interview. “And it turns out, it wasn’t. And it wasn’t something I was very open about.”

The actress would later welcome sons Julian, 7, and Rowan, 5, via surrogate—but not until she and her then-husband went through years of trying to conceive and fertility treatments.

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Brewster partnered with Clearblue on their #Conceivinghood campaign, to normalize the conversation around conception—and that it’s not easy for everyone.

“Whether you have to go through struggles, whether you have to go to a fertility doctor like I did, whether you have to go through gestational surrogacy. [Conceivinghood] just encompasses the whole journey, which I thought was really important,” she said.

Brewster says that often, couples struggle with a sense of personal shame or responsibility when they’re not able to easily conceive. She wants to reframe the conversation.

“I think it’s always us pointing the finger at ourselves when instead, maybe we should go, ‘maybe it was the timing. Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be.’ But it’s very hard to have that perspective when you’re kind of in a tunnel,” she adds.

Those who’ve experienced infertility know that it does feel being in a tunnel. You’re desperate to get out, desperate to become a parent, but you also have no idea what it will take to make that happen.

“It was so difficult for me to not able to control the process and to have to surrender. I was like, what do you mean surrender—I can’t control every aspect of this? That was really difficult for me,” Brewster says.

During this National Infertility Awareness Week, Brewster says she’s happy to continue to offer advice and a shoulder to lean on for other women who are experiencing infertility.

“Hopefully, more women will reach out to me. Hopefully, women will feel comfortable talking to me about their journey and their struggles or if they have any questions, hopefully, they’ll feel comfortable enough walking up to me on the street and asking me. Anything to open up and normalize the conversation will make me really happy.”