“This movie covers domestic violence, but what’s important about this film is she is not just a survivor and not just a victim,” Lively said in one of the only moments during her press tour that she addressed the heavy plot of the movie. “While those are huge things to be, they’re not her identity. She’s not defined by something that someone else did to her.”
To her credit, Lively acknowledged that those words are huge things to be. And she’s right, life does go on after abuse. Some women do not identify with the terms “survivor” and “victim,” at all, and that is a completely valid way to feel. Everyone experiences and processes trauma differently.
But on a personal level, I took eight years to feel comfortable wearing the title of “victim,” and when I did, I realised that I lost parts of myself that I will never be able to recover. There are pieces of me that I will be grieving for the rest of my life. It was oddly healing to realise that I was allowed to feel my pain, and that no matter how many years had passed, sometimes that agony will hit me at the strangest times – the same way that many folks describe the pain of losing a family member. Sometimes it hits when I first wake up in the morning and a pale sun is shining through my curtain and I remember the morning my ex promised me that we would be best friends for life. Or when I attempt to date someone who is good and kind, but I sabotage my chance at happiness because I am terrified of falling in love with a monster.
To see Lively brush away those titles as ‘lesser than’ or as words that we should not be “defined by” during one of her only interviews in which she speaks about the darkness in It Ends With Us, was devastating among victims and survivors. We didn’t choose to define ourselves this way, but as my editor scribbled into my margins, he committed a crime.
Therapists and trained individuals have denounced her language online, explaining to the masses how her response blew right past the effects of trauma on the soul. Violence is not something that one can simply choose “not to be defined by.”
Experts have also highlighted that oftentimes, trauma survivors are told to “just move on already!” Brushing over the main point of the film with toxic positivity and optimism by focusing solely on premiere dresses, flowers, and makeup [Lily Bloom owns a flower shop, isn’t that so cute?], was a downright disturbing live reenactment of systemic discrimination toward victims of domestic abuse.
After facing days of massive backlash, Lively shared a single domestic violence hotline on her Instagram story on Tuesday, writing: “1 in 4 women aged 18 and older in the U.S. alone have been the victim of severe physical violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime. Intimate partner violence affects all genders, including more than 12 million people every year in the United States. Everyone deserves relationships free from domestic violence.”