Eva Mendes and Ryan Gosling are a notoriously private couple, so it’s exciting when either of them opens up about their relationship. Mendes last did this in February, talking specifically about how her family celebrates their Cuban heritage. But in a new interview with Women’s Health, the actress gives a little more insight into her relationship with Gosling. Spoiler alert: They’re still very much in love.

In fact, it was Mendes’ love for Gosling that changed her mind about having children in the first place. (The couple has two daughters, Esmeralda and Amanda.) “It was the furthest thing from my mind,” Mendes tells Women’s Health about having kids. Then, she says, “Ryan Gosling happened. I mean, falling in love with him. Then it made sense for me to have…not kids, but his kids. It was very specific to him.”

Fast-forward several years, and Gosling and Mendes are parenting pros, though she says they’re “just starting to get out of survival mode”: “I’m starting to feel like a person again.”

She credits both her and Gosling’s families for helping them through this “survival mode.” “We have an amazing support group: Ryan’s mom, my mom, Ryan’s and my sisters,” Mendes says. “It’s a village that helped us. My heart goes out to women who do this alone. I basically come from a single-parent household; although I love my dad, my mom mostly raised four of us on her own.”

Gosling gives Mendes plenty of credit too. In his acceptance speech for La La Land at the 2017 Golden Globes, he thanked her for raising their daughter and carrying their second while he was filming. All this happened in tandem with Mendes’ brother, Juan Carlos, fighting—and losing—a battle with cancer. Gosling ultimately dedicated his award to Juan.

Watching this on screen, Mendes says, was “like a dream.” “What I heard was that he said my brother’s name. It was the most beautiful gesture, and I had no idea Ryan was going to say it.”

Read more of Eva Mendes’ interview with Women’s Health here.

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