Blake Lively has had a busy year, to say the least. For the first part of the year, it felt like every other entertainment headline was about her feud with Justin Baldoni. But Blake is shifting focus to “celebrate all the good that is alive in the world,” and share her mom’s survivor story.
Blake was honored at the Time100 Gala on April 24 as one of TIME‘s 100 Most Influential people of 2025. She attended the event with her hubby Ryan Reynolds and her mom Willie Elain McAlpin. Her mom was the main focus of the speech Blake gave about “the feeling of being a woman who has a voice today.” She explained that her life was “influenced most” by Willie, who was the “survivor of the worst crime someone can commit against a woman.”
“My mom never got justice from her work acquaintance who attempted to take her life when she was the mother of three young kids — years before I was born,” Blake shared. “She has always credited her beating heart today with the story she heard from another woman in a similar circumstance, speaking on the radio as my mom drove home one day.”
She went on to describe how the legacy of that one woman’s story had a domino effect that led to her mom’s survival. Read on to learn more about Blake Lively’s mom Willie Elain McAlpin and her survivor story.
What Is Blake Lively’s Mom’s Survivor Story?
Blake Lively pays tribute to her mother, who survived an attack on her life before Lively was born, in a speech at the Time100 Gala in New York. https://t.co/u2TA6tyURX pic.twitter.com/xkC2eDo5Hn
— Variety (@Variety) April 25, 2025
In Blake’s speech, she described how one anonymous woman’s story on the radio reminded her mom of her own strength when she needed it during her own assault.
“The woman painfully and graphically shared how she escaped, and because of hearing that woman speak to her experience instead of shutting down in fear and unfair shame, my mom is alive today,” she said. “She was saved by a woman whose name she’ll never know. I am alive, and standing with you all here 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.”
Blake went on to call womanhood a “pact that privately we must show others how to survive, literally or spiritually.” She also said, “Never underestimate a woman’s ability to endure pain.”
Blake did allude to her It Ends With Us drama with Justin Baldoni, simply saying, “I have so much to say about the last two years of my life, but tonight is not the forum.”
Instead, she focused on “the superpower of female triumph.” She said, “We can make it to the end alive, physically or emotionally, and we will and we do, and we thrive. Even when it doesn’t feel possible. Even when we are in sharp pain.”
Blake ended the speech by thanking “every man, including my sweet husband, who are kind and good when no one is watching.”
