What I saw in the movie "It Ends With Us"

Recently, I watched the movie “It Ends With Us” with Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni.  I had seen the controversy over how the movie was promoted but I was kind of realizing that this is a movie to make money. These people are not domestic violence experts. Many survivors can be triggered by different responses to disclosures and portrayals of abuse along the way. I had an open mind as I watched. I have not read the book.

The story line is that Lily Bloom was raised in a home where her father abused her mother. Her mother did not think she could leave and waited for change. Lily went “No contact” with her father. The movie begins with Lily returning to attend her father’s funeral. Her mother asks her to write down five good things about her dad, but Lily cannot think of any. When she gets up to speak at the funeral. She looks at the empty list on the napkin and leaves the podium without saying anything positive.

Fast forward, she opens her own flower business and meets a guy – a brain surgeon – and they marry. Their relationship is a difficult one with him being overly jealous. There are these accidents that happen – a dish is broken, and she falls down the stairs. Finally, she becomes pregnant as she realizes that this marriage is just like her mother’s. Lily will not live with this. She needs to find a way out. She delivers her baby at the hospital where her husband is working. As he is holding the baby on her hospital bed, she tells him she is going to divorce him. He takes the news without much fanfare. They divorce and she takes the baby home to see her mom. They take the baby to the gravesite of her abusive father. It ends with Lily running into an old boyfriend.

There are several things in this movie that ring true for ME, as I also experienced them. Joy Forrest of Called to Peace Ministries says something like ‘if you have heard one domestic violence story you have heard one domestic violence story.’ There exist patterns of behaviors that predators follow, but each one chooses different tactics to exert coercive control over their victims. So, I am only speaking of a few things in the movie that ring true for me.

Not realizing “accidents” were intentional acts of violence until much later.

Not giving the intentionality of a behavior really messes with your ability to face the truth. My former predator always told me that I was the one with the problem, “that I ALWAYS think the worst of him”. That wasn’t true and he knew it. It was a tactic that the predator used very skillfully so that I would not call him out on his wicked behavior. If he makes me question my ability to determine intentionality, I will always side on the ‘it was an accident’. Who wants to think that their husband tried to put us in a fatal car accident, willfully chose not to show up for your surgery, or purposely attempted to run over a child? In the end, the truth was way worse than anything I thought at the time.

Pinning me down for no apparent reason.

I was pinned down and my nose twisted to draw blood. We were not even in a fight. I was just walking through a room. But years later I realized that he had left for 3 days after that incident. But it was an intentional act of violence. He needed to make me glad that he was not home and that the kids and I were safe for a few days. This way, I wouldn’t ask him about a mistress or prostitutes or a homosexual partner when he got home. (Not sure who he was with at that time)

The safest place is in plain sight - where his image is at stake.

When Lilly has her baby, she allows her abuser to be there in the delivery room. This is his hospital where everyone knows him. When they are sitting alone in the hospital bed and he is holding the baby, she tells him she wants a divorce. That is a bold move!

The parting words: “Enough of that!”

Lily returns to visit her mom and they go to the cemetery where her father is buried. Lily goes to see the grave, says, “Good bye, Pops,” and leaves behind the napkin she had kept for years with the numbers 1 to 5 on it. They were the 5 positive things she was to say at his memorial service, but she could not think of one. The truest statement in the movie for a survivor is said as she and her mother walk away.  “Enough of that!” I would add that often the phrase ends with “Enough of that $h1t”.

So many times, family members have been sitting around sharing stories of abuse. Some bring perspectives that others didn’t know about or even events they personally did not see. Then usually at some point someone says, “Oh thank God that is over! Then we change the subject. “Enough of that $h!t”

And we walk away and into our new lives…

How Coercive Control Changes You: That Time I Called CPS

We worked at a Christian boarding school in south Texas for high school students. My abuser was the principal, and I was a first year teacher. We lived on campus with other staff.

One day, the son of an employee came to school with a bad cut on his arm. He said his mother got mad at him, took a broken plate and cut his arm.  I was horrified as were others. Others had witnessed the father/employee raging at students. This father spoke about their son’s mental health and said, “he is adopted”. I heard that his mom admitted to cutting him but that it was “an accident”.

When employees started asking if we should call CPS, the abuser said no, we shouldn’t bring the “state” into this. “It is a private matter.”

I thought about that for a while.

Then I called CPS and reported the mother and my abuser for not reporting it.

We had only been married three years, max. This was before battered wife syndrome or Stockholm syndrome had set in.

I don’t know if anyone ever knew it was me. Maybe someone else called too, I do not know.

I’m talking about it now because it shows just  how far the abuser went to brainwash me over the next 3 decades, to keep my mouth shut when CPS needed to be called. It was my character and personality to call for justice when people were harmed.

But recovery from domestic violence is recognizing how you were manipulated.

How they did cruel things to make you silent to protect your children.

How they tore you down so you would not be who God intended you to be.

It is all very insidious and wicked.

But recognizing the slow turn of the burner as you sat in the kettle of water helps to unlock any hold the past has on your future.

It is true that “Don’t fool yourselves. Bad friends will destroy you. “ (1 Corinthians 15:33)

But thankfully, we can “Let the spirit change your way of thinking and make you into a new person.” (Ephesians 4:23-24a)

Are you in a destructive marriage? Are you trying to divorce a person who has no conscience? I have been there, and I would appreciate the opportunity to help you navigate these difficult times.

Please email me to sign up for a 15-minute consultation and see if I am the person you are looking for.

Why I Created a Voiceless Chore Chart System

Isolation is one of the common techniques of abusers and predators. If they can keep you from having solid relationships with your family or with ladies at the church, then they don’t have any competition to acknowledge the pain of your destructive marriage.

One of the ways my abuser did this was to constantly and consistently tell me he hated my voice.

If he walked in and I was on the phone, he would tell me I was shouting, and I shouldn’t be talking to them. When I got off the phone with family, he would tell me that I was too dependent on them. That my relationship was unnatural and that I am supposed to “leave and cleave”.  I do understand that there are times when these relationships can get out of hand and have poor boundaries, but that was not my case. We didn’t even live in the same town.

I had nine children with the predator. I lost twins at one point. I wasn’t allowed to grieve them since they were “only 16 weeks”. Friends from church helped me through it, but no comfort came from the abuser.

As I was raising the kids, I really wanted them to learn how to maintain their stuff and help with the chores. I created a dinner chore duties wheel that worked well for supper time chores. Every Saturday, I gave the kids 2-3 chores to do before they went off to play. If they finished those chores then they could be hired out to do chores for money.  I am sure I came up with the system after reading a book or magazine article.

So, things were going very well with my system and the kids were learning to do chores and completing tasks well. Every time I did these things the abuser would either leave the house or sit in his chair reading the newspaper.

Finally, one day the predator started telling me how he hated to hear my voice when I gave the kids their chores. It was an insane thing to say. He wasn’t around if I corrected them or praised them. He just hated hearing my voice.

I did not want to give up on the kids learning chores, so I came up with a voiceless chore system. I put all the tasks on index cards, and I laid them out of the table under each child’s name. When they had finished a chore, they turned the card over, so I knew to go check on their work. If they finished everything, they could ask to be “hired out” to earn money on some more difficult tasks.

As I think about all this, I really don’t know what was on the predator’s mind.

Did he think he could kill me off for making me responsible for everything in the home and exhaust me to death?

Did he hate my voice because I loved my kids, and we were doing something together?

Did he just realize I was succeeding as a mom, and he wanted to undermine it?

No one really knows. But the fact that I had to create a voiceless chore system is proof of ongoing emotional abuse.

Does your partner tell you he hates your voice? This is a giant red flag you may be involved with someone with a seared conscience. Do you need someone to talk to?

Please reach out to me at seekingpeacecoaching@gmail.com if you need any help.