Ashlyn Harris on her storybook relationship with Sophia Bush

Retired soccer star Ashlyn Harris is opening up about motherhood and her relationship with actress Sophia Bush in a new candid interview.

On this week’s episode of the Second Wind podcast, the 39-year-old Olympic goalkeeper talked about everything from the drug addiction she recently went public with to the love she shares with her famous girlfriend to her feelings around gender.

Harris told hosts Marion Jones, a five-time Olympic champion and track and field legend and bestselling author Suzanne Evans, that her controversial relationship with Bush — many people speculated that the two had an affair while they were still married to other people — is the stuff fairytales are made of.

“What I love so much about her is she makes me feel the way I only thought we read about in books,” Harris said. “She holds up a mirror and makes me feel like I'm the best human, I'm the best mother, and it's exactly what I needed and what I need to heal so much pain and trauma and grief in my life.”

She also said that Bush is helping her accept that she is a good mom and not second-guess herself so much.

“I made a promise that my kids wouldn't feel the same kind of pain that I did as a kid, and I put a lot of pressure on myself, and she's just like, ‘You are the best mom. I just have never seen someone move and act the way you do.’ And it's this type of reassurance that she came into my life when I was an open wound, and she's so selfless and such a beautiful person that even in the hardest season of her life, she wants to help me heal, which is something I'll never forget,” Harris explained.

One of the most powerful aspects of the couple’s relationship is that Harris never feels judged for her flaws because Bush doesn’t see her “pain and scars as an issue,” but instead as her “superpower.”

“She sees it as a superpower, and she's showing and teaching me every day to use it in such a way that heals and helps other people, that I have an incredible gift to be not only a parent, but the way I show up for people,” Harris said. “She’s just made my life so much richer. I don't even know how to express it or articulate it.”

Bush has become her soft place to fall, and she doesn’t feel the need to always be strong around her, admitting, “I can just unravel in moments and know that she's going to catch me.”

When it comes to gender expression, Harris told the podcasters that she doesn’t “buy into that man woman role model” and thinks of herself as being pretty gender neutral.

“I mean, I'm a pretty gender neutral person,” she said. “I have a– lot of me is very masculine, and there are parts of me that are very soft and sensitive. I honestly don't overthink it. I think that is more of a product of what society tells us that things have to be this way, and there needs to be more masculine energy or this or that. I don't really buy into all that crap.”

Early in the interview, Harris also got candid about her past struggle with drugs while she was in college, something that she opened up about in early April.

Harris admitted that trying to pay her way through college, the pressure of being at the top of her game, and prescription for Adderall led to her spiral into drug abuse.

“I was a part of the youth national team system since I was 13, so I was getting drug tested, this was a way for me to cheat the system,” she said candidly. “This was prescribed to me. I don't have an addiction. Oh, this is not me using cocaine. Well, it sure f*cking felt like it. So it's just this process of unfiltered, unexpressed grief and pain I didn't know how to deal with.”