Last night, Blake Lively gave an impassioned speech at the Time100 gala.
Though Lively has attended multiple events throughout the ongoing legal battle with Justin Baldoni, her first public allusion to the ensuing discourse came at the event honoring Time’s annual list of the 100 most influential people. Lively, one of the evening’s honorees, prefaced her speech with an acknowledgment of the discourse before focussing on her biggest influence: her mother, Willie Elaine McAlpine.
“I have so much to say about the last two years of my life, but tonight is not the forum,” she told her audience. “What I will speak to, separately, is the feeling of being a woman who has a voice today.”
In her speech, which can be watched in full here, Lively revealed her mother had survived “the worst crime someone can commit against a woman.” Though she says her mother “never got justice from her work acquaintance who attempted to take her life” before Lively was born, the actor says her mother was “saved” by an unnamed woman who shared a similar story on the radio.
“The woman painfully and graphically shared how she escaped. And because of hearing that woman speak about her experience instead of shutting down in fear and unfair shame, my mom is alive today,” Lively said. “She was saved by a woman whose name she’ll never know. I am alive and standing here with you all today, being honored, because of a woman whose name I’ll never know. I am here, my mom is here, because that woman not only survived, but she told others how. I am here, my mom is here, because that woman not only survived, but she told others how.”
Lively continued, “It’s a silent torch of womanhood that we that we come to know—a pact that privately, we must show others how to survive, literally or spiritually. We don’t let our daughters know, but one day, we break their hearts by letting them in on the secret that we kept from them as they pranced around in princess dresses: that they are not and will likely never be safe at work, at home, in a parking lot, in a medical office, online, in any space they inhabit, physically, emotionally, professionally.”
Lively went on to ask, “But why does that torch have to be our burden to carry in private? How can we not all agree on that basic human right?”
