The Yellowjackets star Liv Hewson opened up about their experience with top surgery. The nonbinary actor gained notoriety with their role on the Showtime show playing the teenage version of Vanessa “Van” Palmer. Now with their success, they spoke about their experience getting top surgery, per People.

Top surgery is undergone by trans masculine individuals seeking a masculine chest. (Feminine identifying individuals seek the opposite, a more feminine chest. In the case of Liv Hewson, they had a masculinizing surgery).

“I cannot tell you the complete, fundamental shift that I have felt in the year since having surgery,” Hewson said. “I knew that I wanted top surgery for a decade; it’s the longest I’ve ever thought about doing anything. The place that I went, I had that clinic’s website open on my laptop for five years. It was this impossible mountain: I want that, but I’m never gonna get it. No one’s gonna let me, blah, blah, blah.”

“To have that be in the past now… I stand differently, I walk differently, I carry myself differently,” the Yellowjackets star continued. “It feels different in my body than it ever has. I just have never been happier. I’ve never been more centered, I’ve never felt more stable and present and alive. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done for myself. It’s taught me a lot. The recovery process taught me about rest, accepting help, and caring for my body as something connected to me rather than separate from me, that I’m in opposition to: This is mine, and I want to take care of it, and I feel good in it and good about it.”

They also addressed the assumption from cisgender people that they might regret the surgery. They won’t.

“Part of cis people’s fear around gender-affirming surgery is the fear of surgery at all — ‘Oh, my God, but that’s painful and scary!’ My reaction to that is, ‘No, no, you misunderstood. It was painful before. Your worry has kicked in at the wrong time. The right time to be concerned was about the pain I was in before this. I’m great now.”