Angelina Jolie is sharing her story and is hoping to help others who might be in the same situation as herself.

Jolie, 37, announced that she had a preventive double mastectomy after learning she carried a gene that makes her very likely to get hit with breast cancer.

The Oscar-winning actress and Brad Pitt’s partner made the announcement in the form of an op-ed she wrote under the title "My Medical Choice”, where she wrote that between early February and late April, she completed three months of surgical procedures to remove both her breasts.

Jolie said that she decided to go through the procedure for her six children after her mother, actress Marcheline Bertrand, died at a young age of cancer.

"My mother battled cancer for nearly a decade, and she died in 2007, at 56-years-old,” Jolie wrote. "She held out long enough to meet the first of her grandchildren and to hold them in her arms. But my other children never had the opportunity to know her and experience how kind she was," she added.

Jolie said that after genetic testing she has learned that she carries the "faulty" BRCA1 gene and had an 87 percent chance of getting the disease. She kept the process private until now, but she decided to share her story in hopes of helping other women.

"I wanted to write this to tell other women that the decision to undergo a mastectomy was not easy, but I'm so glad I did," Jolie wrote. "My chance of developing breast cancer was reduced from 87 percent to less than 5 percent. I can tell my children that they don't need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer," Jolie wrote.

Jolie had surgery to reconstruct her breasts and she got breast implants. "I do not feel anything less of a woman," Jolie wrote. "I feel empowered that I made a good choice that in no way diminishes my femininity," she added.

“It must have been a hard and painful decision, but she saw her mother suffer and she does not want to go through the same thing. I applaud Angelina for sharing her decision so publicly, it might help other women make the right decision for themselves,” Elaine Flores, 41, of San Diego, California told said after hearing about Jolie’s double mastectomy.

She also wrote that Brad Pitt, her partner of eight years, was always at her side when she had her surgeries at the Pink Lotus Breast Center in Southern California.

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