Maria Bello says she tried her hardest to fight signs of aging.

In an Instagram post on Monday, Bello, 56, said she had “decided to come back to instagram after a two year (meno)PAUSE.” She detailed going through the early stages of menopause during COVID-19, and the attempts she made to stop her appearance from changing as a result.

“I took bio-identical hormones (and still do), dieted harder and faster but still managed to gain 15 pounds, tried Ozempic for a week but gave up after the constant nausea and vomiting, got rid of the waddle on my neck, tried Botox, fillers and lasers, face creams, cellulite machines, face threads, teeth straightening and more,” she wrote. “I did copious amounts of therapy, including micro-dosing psilocybin, left Hollywood and all social media and at the end of it all finally moved to Paris. That was October of 2021.”

After those extensive steps, Bello said, she pivoted to work on her mental state more than her appearance, and wrote that she “decided then to embrace the PAUSE in menopause and immerse myself in the 7 tasks of mid-life that Carl Jung spoke about.”

Jung viewed aging as a developmental process, rather than a passive waiting period where one simply whiles time away until the end of life. Bello tagged the post with #thepause and #mariasmenopause, hinting that she’d be sharing more of her journey in posts to come.

“Now after finally coming out of my cocoon of self reflection, I want to share my journey over the last two years to accept my newly emerging self,” she wrote. “I hope these posts will help anyone crossing over to the ‘second half of life’ and inspire them not to avoid menopause but to embrace it. So here we go!”

Bello was a producer and has a story credit on 2022’s The Woman King.