We love Evan Rachel Wood not just because she’s a talented actress, but because she’s REAL. She is always honest about her struggles in life, so much so can’t help but connect with her in a truly unique way.

During a speech for the Human Rights Campaign’s Visibility Award this weekend, the actress opened up about struggling with bisexuality in her teens and how she got through it.

“There was a time, despite what it may have looked like on the surface, that the fear had gripped me so tight, and I felt broken and unlovable,” Evan, who is openly bisexual said. “And I did not think I would see tomorrow…

“Because of the voices I listened to, because of the people I identified with, the films I had watched, the music I had heard, because of words like ‘bisexual’ and the doors that it opened, I’m still here,” she said. “And I didn’t miss out on the most beautiful thing I’ve seen yet, and that was my son.”

Evan also elaborated on her leaning teen years, saying “I thought that I was like every other girl who had a slight obsession with Jessica Rabbit, K.D. Lang and Melissa Etheridge… A girl who was more comfortable borrowing her brother’s baggy pants and backwards hats than putting on an Easter dress. Who would rather play in the mud than in makeup… Right around when puberty and sexual feelings start to take over – and I felt something that I couldn’t explain…

“I thought women were beautiful,” she continued, “and I realized I had always thought women were beautiful. But because I was born that way, I never once stopped to think that was strange or anything to fear.”

As far as what it taught her, she said, “I realized that every time I had reached out my hand to someone through a song or a performance of mine I was also reaching for someone’s hand. I see you, you see me. We aren’t so different. And through that connection, the healing begins.”