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Reese Witherspoon on leaving a verbally abusive relationship: ‘I couldn’t go any further’

Reese Witherspoon is one of the actresses behind the Time’s Up initiative, which launched in January 2018 and aims to end gender discrimination and imbalance in the workplace. Because of her involvement both with this and the #MeToo movement, Reese’s been quite vocal about the harassment she’s experienced firsthand, both in her professional and personal life. In October she revealed that a director sexually assaulted her when she was 16, and now she’s opening up about another incident: leaving an abusive relationship.

In the March issue of  O, The Oprah Magazine, the  Wrinkle in Time actress says she was in a “verbally” and “psychologically” abusive relationship many years ago, and leaving it helped fulfil her destiny. Reese doesn’t get into specifics, but from her quotes, it seems like this person used mentally damaging tactics to try and stifle her ambition.

“I drew a line in the sand, and it got crossed, and my brain just switched. I couldn’t go any further. I was really young, and it was profound,” Reese said, according to E! Online.

She continued, “It changed who I was on a cellular level, the fact that I stood up for myself. It’s part of the reason I can stand up and say, ‘Yes, I’m ambitious.’ Because someone tried to take that from me.”

The concept of female ambition is something Reese’s talked about at length over the years. In fact, she gained widespread acclaim after telling  Glamour in 2015 that “ ambition is not a dirty word.”

“A Columbia University study found that people considered an ambitious woman more selfish and less worthy of being hired than an ambitious man. I thought We need to start reframing this word  ambition,” Witherspoon also says in  O.“Because it isn’t about being selfish; it’s about wanting to create more and do better for communities, schools, the world.”

Taken from GLAMOUR US. Click  here to read the original.

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