She has it all – a successful Hollywood career, famous boyfriend and beautiful kids – but when it comes down to it, Reese Witherspoon says she thinks of herself as a single mom making it through the day.

“It isn’t anything I chose in life, it just sort of happened that way,” the Walk the Line Oscar winner, 33, told PEOPLE at Tuesday’s Avon Foundation for Women charity event at New York’s Cipriani 42nd Street, where she was the honorary co-chair. “We all just do the best we can. We’re all just people trying to get through life however we can … I’m thrilled to be any sort of inspiration to anyone!”

Most inspiring is that the foundation she works with raises millions for women with breast cancer and victims of domestic violence.

Witherspoon, who has moved on from former husband Ryan Phillippe to a supportive boyfriend in Jake Gyllenhaal, also spoke about the new Avon fragrance she has launched, In Bloom.

“I just wanted a scent memory of my childhood in Tennessee growing up,” she says. “A lot of it is white flowers and gardenias and things that I grew up in the backyard loving. Things that I smelled on my mother and my grandmother that really inspired a feeling of being back home.”