Sophia Bush: ‘I Finally Feel Like I Can Breathe’

In 2023 actor Sophia Bush made headlines when she filed for divorce one year after a storybook wedding. By the fall it was public knowledge that she was in a new relationship. With a woman. The internet seemed to be foaming at the digital mouth for a scandal, but to those who knew her, it was clear she’d never been more herself.  Here, in her own words, Bush speaks to the power of finally learning to listen to her intuition.

In April of 2022 I was close to calling off my wedding. Instead of running away, I doubled down on being a model wife. In 2023 my now ex-husband posted a lovely tribute to our first anniversary on Instagram. When I saw it, I felt the blood drain from my face. Fans and friends were telling me how exciting this milestone was and how happy I looked. I felt nothing. Things hadn’t been easy at home, but everyone says marriage is hard, right? As the day wore on, I felt mounting pressure from strangers online waiting for me to post something—what a strange part of public life to have to navigate—so I sat myself down and chose a picture.

It was a black-and-white photograph of us running away from the camera. Yes, I see the bittersweet irony now. I wrote a really nice story about the people in that picture. Except it was just that: a story. I typed something about how incredibly happy I was and tried to drown out the familiar voice in my head. Make it look easy. Make it look perfect. If your smile is shiny enough, maybe no one will notice that up close all of your teeth are broken. But sometimes broken is just broken.

I hit post. And then I walked into the bathroom and threw up.

I believe in people and ideas so deeply—and those feelings are often so powerful to me—that I hadn’t realized I’d spent the last two decades moving through life showing up for others but often turning my back on myself. This time things felt different. Maybe it’s just cold feet, I told myself. Maybe I was too sensitive. Maybe this was the feeling you get when you settle down later in life and have to make space for another person. There have been moments in my life when it feels like the universe is screaming at me to pay attention. This was one of them, but I didn’t listen.

I kept repeating the adages we all know so well: Relationships are hard. Marriage takes compromise. You know the rest. And so I got married. We threw one of the greatest wedding weekends ever. We had an amazing time with our closest friends and family. It was truly one of the best parties I’ve ever been to, and we raised a ton of money for charity. I don’t regret any of that.

But after the wedding I found myself in the depths and heartbreak of the fertility process, which was the most clarifying experience of my life. It feels like society is finally making space for brutally honest conversations about how hard and painful any fertility journey is, but I kept mine private. I was trying to get through months of endless ultrasounds, hormone shots, so many blood draws that I have scar tissue in my veins, and retrieval after retrieval, while simultaneously realizing the person I had chosen to be my partner didn’t necessarily speak the same emotional language I did.

As I lost track of how many examination tables I had lain on alone, I felt something in me seismically shift. Six months into that journey, I think I knew deep down that I absolutely had made a mistake. It would take my head and heart a while longer to understand what my bones already knew.

And that’s why, when I got an opportunity to do a play in London, I had to go. I had to get out of our house. I had to get onstage. I had to get back in my body. Maybe that could shift things. Maybe that would jump-start the joy I’d been chasing. The play slowly began to put me back together. It was grueling, and it was also the most exhilarating experience. I loved every second of it.

But the book doesn’t lie. The body does, in fact, keep the score. When half of our company went down with a virus, everyone recovered fast except for me. I continued to decline. I would put every fiber of my being into my performance onstage, and then be packed in bags of ice as soon as the curtain closed. I spent multiple nights in the hospital, I was pumped with endless amounts of fluids, I underwent cardiac testing and organ monitoring. It was clear that my body was screaming and I had to listen. It was hard for me to accept. I was part of a team. But I needed to go home, where my doctors (and, truthfully, my health insurance) could get a better handle on my symptoms. My time in London was over. So was my marriage. It all came crashing down at once.

During the summer of 2023, I moved back into my empty home in LA. I was separated and preparing to file for divorce, and groups of women in my life started opening up about issues they were going through in their own homes. It seemed like every week there were more of us, including [former US soccer player] Ashlyn [Harris], whom I’d first met in 2019 and who was in the process of figuring out her own split from her wife. She’d been such a kind ear for those of us who opened up about our problems during a shared weekend of speaking engagements at a fancy conference in Cannes, and soon it became clear that she needed our ears too.

For those of us who had no solution in sight or Hail Marys left, having this community changed everything. We really wrapped one another up in support. It was tragic and hard. But it was also beautiful. There were moments of incredible sadness because no one signs up to get married thinking it’ll end. The days when we knew people needed to laugh, we sent inspirational memes and silly TikToks. We read books written by great therapists and shared emo quotes from poets. Our “Begin Again” Amazon shopping list, which we created for the ones moving out and starting over, has now been forwarded to so many other women.

I didn’t expect to find love in this support system. I don’t know how else to say it other than: I didn’t see it until I saw it. And I think it’s very easy not to see something that’s been in front of your face for a long time when you’d never looked at it as an option and you had never been looked at as an option. What I saw was a friend with her big, happy life. And now I know she thought the same thing about me.

It really took other people in our safe support bubble pointing out to me how we’d finish each other’s sentences or be deeply affected by the same things. When you’re so in the trenches of hardship—plus you have the added weight of having to go through it on a public stage—it can be hard to see anything but what’s right in front of you.

It took me confronting a lot of things, what felt like countless sessions of therapy, and some prodding from loved ones, but eventually I asked Ashlyn to have a non-friend-group hang to talk about it.

And that meal was four and a half hours long and truly one of the most surreal experiences of my life thus far. In hindsight, maybe it all had to happen slowly and then suddenly all at once. Maybe it was all fated. Maybe it really is a version of invisible string theory. I don’t really know. But I do know that for a sparkly moment I felt like maybe the universe had been conspiring for me. And that feeling that I have in my bones is one I’ll hold on to no matter where things go from here.

But there was a lot that quickly turned ugly too. People looking in from the outside weren’t privy to just how much time it took, how many painful conversations were had. A lot of effort was made to be graceful with other people’s processing, their time and obligations, and their feelings. What felt like seconds after I started to see what was in front of me, the online rumor mill began to spit in the ugliest ways. There were blatant lies. Violent threats. There were accusations of being a home-wrecker. The ones who said I’d left my ex because I suddenly realized I wanted to be with women—my partners have known what I’m into for as long as I have (so that’s not it, y’all, sorry!).

The idea that I left my marriage based on some hysterical rendezvous—that, to be crystal-clear, never happened—rather than having taken over a year to do the most soul crushing work of my life? Rather than realizing I had to be the most vulnerable I’ve ever been, on a public stage, despite being terrified to my core? It feels brutal. Just because I didn’t want to process my realizations in real time on social media and spell them out for the world doesn’t mean the journey wasn’t long and thoughtful and exhaustive.

It’s painful to be doing deep work and have it picked apart by clueless strangers. Everyone that matters to me knows what’s true and what isn’t. But even still there’s a part of me that’s a ferocious defender, who wants to correct the record piece by piece. But my better self, with her earned patience, has to sit back and ask, What’s the fucking point? For who? For internet trolls? No, thank you. I’ll spend my precious time doing things I love instead.

I don’t believe it’s my place to discuss details of Ashlyn’s circumstances or her children, but I will say that I am absolutely in awe of her relentless integrity. The way she prioritizes and centers her kids, not only in her life but in the core of her being, is breathtaking to behold. Falling in love with her has sutured some of my own childhood wounds, and made me so much closer to my own mother. Seeing Ashlyn choose to not simply survive, but thrive, for her babies has been the most beautiful thing I’ve ever witnessed a friend do. And now I get to love her. How lucky am I?

I sort of hate the notion of having to come out in 2024. But I’m deeply aware that we are having this conversation in a year when we’re seeing the most aggressive attacks on the LGBTQIA+ community in modern history. There were more than 500 anti-LGBTQIA+ bills proposed in state legislatures in 2023, so for that reason I want to give the act of coming out the respect and honor it deserves. I’ve experienced so much safety, respect, and love in the queer community, as an ally all of my life, that, as I came into myself, I already felt it was my home. I think I’ve always known that my sexuality exists on a spectrum. Right now I think the word that best defines it is queer. I can’t say it without smiling, actually. And that feels pretty great.

Would I have liked to make the public part of this journey a choice for myself, and not have it taken from my lips and set ablaze by gossip blogs and bottom-feeder online bots? Of course. I’m very aware, though, as we discuss bullying and harassment and being outed without consent—that I’m incredibly lucky this happened in my adulthood. I really love who I am, at this age and in this moment. I’m so lucky that my parents, having spent time with Ash over the holidays, said, “Well, this finally looks right.” I know it could have gone differently.

We’ve all learned about kids who have taken their own life after being outed or who have been killed simply for being who they are in a place or time that is threatened by their expressed joy. I am so lucky to be here, now. I have real joy. It took me 41 years to get here. And while I marvel at it, I will also make space for people’s pain. But I will not carry anyone’s projected shame. When I take stock of the last few years, I can tell you that I have never operated out of more integrity in my life. I hope that’s clear enough for everyone speculating out there, while being as gentle as I possibly can be.

After the news became public, my mom told me that one of her friends called her and said, “Well, this can’t be true. I mean, your daughter isn’t gay.” My mom felt that it was obvious, from the way her friend emphasized the word, that she meant it judgmentally. And you know what my mom said? “Oh honey, I think she’s pretty gay. And she’s happy.”

I finally feel like I can breathe. I don't think I can explain how profound that is. I feel like I was wearing a weighted vest for who knows how long. I hadn’t realized how heavy it was until I finally just put it down. This might sound crazy—but I think other people in trauma recovery will get it—I am taking deep breaths again. I can feel my legs and feet. I can feel my feet in my shoes right now. It makes me want to cry and laugh at the same time.

It is so, so scary to do the brave thing, to say, “I’m just not happy.” Especially if you’re in a partnership and you have to say it first. But if you do it, you get the chance to be happy. To find your joy. I turned 41 last summer, amid all of this, and I heard the words I was saying to my best friend as they came out of my mouth. “I feel like this is my first birthday,” I told her. This year was my very first birthday.

Sophia Bush is an actor, activist, and host of the podcasts Work in Progress and Drama Queens. Follow her at @sophiabush.

Photographer: Lauren Dukoff
Stylist: Deborah Afshani
Hair: Matthew Collins
Makeup: Afton Williams
Manicure: Brittney Boyce

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Originally Appeared on Glamour