It’s been almost a year that Ashley Judd announced her separation from her race car driving hubby Dario Franchitti, but it’s clear the two are still close friends. And by the way it sounds, it’s possible they’re just taking a break, instead of getting an actual divorce.

In an interview with Ladies Home Journal, the 45 year old said what her and Franchitti are going through is pretty normal and even though they’re currently separated they still care for each other deeply.

In addition, Judd says she doesn’t feel a need to discuss either her marriage or her separation with others, nor does she have a desire to pretend that her life is perfect.

“He’ll always be my loved one,” she said of her estranged husband. “Even before our wedding, we agreed not to tell people about our relationship, but to show them instead. What we’re showing them now is we’re human, we’re family and this is what family looks like.”

And never to be one to hold her tongue, Judd also spoke out against photographers using Photoshop on women. She says it takes away their actual beauty and turns them into something fake.

“It distorts images of women,” she said. “Trees turn colors and lose their leaves. That’s what they’re supposed to do, just like women are supposed to have their own seasons of life.”

The actress also spoke a little about her teenage years and said she struggled to find herself, and believes it’s difficult for some young people to find that one person to offer encouragement or tell them they’re wonderful, and the character she plays in the highly anticipated film Divergent goes through something similar.

“I play a woman who doesn’t fit with the group she was born into,” says Judd. “The film is really about the greatest fundamental human longing, which is to belong. But it’s also about that opposing desire to be an individual.

“Adolesence was exceedingly difficult for me….Only when I got into therapy and started to understand what neglect looked like was I able to ask, ‘Where were the teachers? Where was everybody?'”

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