Reese Witherspoon Says Surviving Abuse Made Her The Woman She Is Today
Reese Witherspoon is sharing one of the hardest chapters of her life and how it shaped the woman she is today. In a new episode of The Interview podcast, the 49-year-old actress reflected on surviving an abusive relationship in her younger years.
Reese admitted that at the time she lacked the emotional maturity to recognize how damaging the relationship was. “I was very good at being a professional and showing up, and doing the right thing. But I wasn’t emotionally mature when I was young, and you get into relationships that don’t work for you and sometimes you don’t even see the dynamics that are happening,” she told host Lulu Garcia-Navarro.
Leaving that relationship, she said, was just the beginning of a long healing process. “When I got out of that, it took me a while to reconstitute myself. My spirit had been diminished because I thought all those awful things that person said about me were true. I had to rewire my brain.”
Reese explained that insecurity clouded her ability to see the truth, something she’s realized many survivors of abuse have in common. “…I’ve talked to a lot of people who’ve been in abusive relationships, and they can’t see it. You know? And I couldn’t see it. It took me a long time to be this woman that I am now.”
The Morning Show star also spoke about how difficult it was to go through such struggles under the public eye. “I have a lot of compassion for people who live public lives and maintain privacy. It’s nearly impossible at this point with everybody dehumanizing you in a certain way, like taking pictures of you like you’re an animal in the zoo instead of a person with their children or having a private moment. It was hard. It was really hard.”
This isn’t the first time Reese has opened up about her past. In a 2018 conversation with Oprah Winfrey, she revealed she had endured psychological and verbal abuse in that same relationship. At the time, she said the turning point came when “a line in the sand” was crossed. “…My brain just switched. I couldn’t go any further. I was really young, and it was profound.”
That experience, she said then, “changed who I was on a cellular level.” It also gave her the strength to embrace her ambition unapologetically. As she shared, “It’s part of the reason I can stand up and say, ‘Yes, I’m ambitious.’ Because someone tried to take that from me.”
