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Writer's pictureJanet Kelly

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…

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