How I Met Your Mother’s Cobie Smulders Reveals Cancer Details

After a frightening bout with ovarian cancer several years ago, How I Met Your Mother‘s Cobie Smulders has opened up about the details of the how she has learned to embrace her past.

On Tuesday, the 34-year-old actress published an essay on Lenny in which she revealed that she felt devastated and had a sense of anxiety after she was diagnosed with cancer. She recalled making several significant life changes throughout the battle with her illness.

“I started meditating,” Smulders wrote. “I was constantly in a yoga studio. I went to energy healers who evaporated black smoke from my lower body… I went to a cleansing retreat in the desert where I didn’t eat for eight days and experienced hunger-driven hallucinations,” she continued. “I read so many books (Crazy Sexy Cancer, by Kris Carr, was one of the best). I went to crystal healers. Kinesiologists. Acupuncturists. Naturopaths. Therapists. Hormone therapists. Chiropractors. Dietitians. Ayurvedic practitioners …”

The Jack Reacher: Never Go Back star also said, “I really wish I could tell you what particular combination of these things, along with multiple surgeries, eventually gave me a clean bill of health.”

One of the experiences that Smulders said helped her overcome her emotional wounds was posing topless on a 2015 issue of Women’s Health magazine.

“It was a very strange day,” Smulders wrote. “I was standing in front of a camera lens in my underwear and holding my breasts, all while trying to appear not sexy but confident, not flirtatious but gleamingly positive. It all made me start thinking about this body that I’m in. And what it has been through.”

While it might have been a “strange day,” Smulders felt that she had a duty to spread awareness for the disease, even if she had to pose topless in order to do so.

“I don’t know if I will ever be free of my cancer — or, to be more specific, free from the fear of my cancer’s return,” Smulders said. “I wish that we as women spent as much time on the well-being of our insides as we do with our looks on the outside. If you are going through something like this, I urge you to look at all your options. To ask questions. To learn as much as you can about your diagnosis. To breathe. To ask for help. To cry and to fight.”

We commend Cobie Smulders for her bravery in sharing this touching story.

[H/T Entertainment Tonight]