After her second marriage ended Kaley Cuoco described one particular morning as the worst of her entire life — barely functioning, hitting rock bottom in a way that the bubbly sitcom star the whole world thought they knew would have been completely unrecognizable.

She turned 40 quietly — celebrating with her fiancé Tom Pelphrey and their daughter Matilda at a special location in New York — and what she shared about getting older, about people and about the life she has finally built looks nothing like the woman who once said she would never trust love again. Penny from The Big Bang Theory spent years making the whole world laugh. Kaley Cuoco spent those same years quietly figuring out how to be happy — and at 40 she finally got there.