Blake Lively Delivers Emotional Time100 Gala Speech, Reveals Her Mother Survived Attempt on Her Life

At the Time100 Gala in New York, Blake Lively took the stage for a speech that stunned and moved the audience — not just because of the grace with which she delivered it, but because of the harrowing family story she shared for the first time.

Lively, being honored as one of TIME’s most influential people of the year, used her five-minute address to celebrate the resilience of women — particularly her mother, Willie Elain McAlpin, who survived a brutal attempt on her life years before Blake was born.

“My life was influenced most by my mother,” Lively began, gesturing toward McAlpin seated in the crowd. She described her mom as an “eternal optimist,” always calling with cheerful messages like, “Life’s just a bowl of cherries.”

But behind that optimism was unimaginable pain. Lively revealed that her mother, then a young mother of three, had been the target of a violent attack by someone she knew — a work acquaintance — who tried to kill her. “She never got justice,” Lively said. “But she credits her survival to hearing another woman’s story on the radio — someone who had escaped a similar attack.”

That woman’s voice, shared vulnerably over the airwaves, helped McAlpin escape. It saved her life. And, by extension, it gave Blake her own.

“I am here, my mom is here,” Lively said through emotion, “because that woman not only survived, but she told others how.”

The speech, delivered at Jazz at Lincoln Center with Ryan Reynolds by her side, was the most personal Lively has ever given — and the first time she has alluded publicly to the legal and personal turmoil she’s endured over the past two years. That includes a still-unresolved lawsuit involving her It Ends With Us co-star and director Justin Baldoni, whom she has accused of enabling harassment on set, and who in turn has accused her of defamation and career sabotage.

Without naming him directly, Lively said, “I have so much to say about the last two years of my life, but tonight is not the forum.”

What she did say was enough to echo throughout the ballroom — a defiant, deeply felt tribute to the endurance of women. “We can make it to the end alive, physically or emotionally,” she said. “And we will. Even when it doesn’t feel possible. Even when we are in sharp pain. Never underestimate a woman’s ability to endure pain.”

She ended with a nod to her mother’s favorite phrase — “Life’s just a bowl of cherries” — but this time, it carried all the weight of what that has cost her family to believe.