Angelina Jolie describes her double mastectomy and resulting scars as “a choice” she is “grateful” she could make.

The 50-year-old actress had a preventative double mastectomy in 2013 after learning she had a high familial risk of getting the disease.

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While she doesn’t often discuss it, in a new interview with France Inter she said that she loves her scars, describing them as “a choice I made to stay here as long as I could with my children. I love my scars because of that. And I’m grateful that I had the opportunity and the choice to do something proactive about my health.”

She also said she’s “always been someone more interested in the scars and the life that people carry. I’m not drawn to a perfect idea of a life that has no scars.”

Angelina felt that undergoing the surgery was especially important to her because she lost her mother, Marcheline Bertrand, to cancer when she was young and is raising her kids without a grandmother.

“So for me, I think this is life, and if you get to the end of your life and you haven’t made mistakes and you haven’t made a mess, you don’t have scars, you haven’t lived a full enough life,” the Mr. & Mrs. Smith star concluded.

Angelina‘s new movie Couture will be released in France on February 18. She recently attended the premiere in a beautiful, sheer, bedazzled gown. See the photos here.