Chelsea Devantez Won't Be Silenced About Surviving Domestic Violence: 'Sharing Is an Antidote to Shame' (Exclusive)

The author and comedian, who is also host of the Glamorous Trash podcast opened up about why she shared her abusive relationship in her debut memoir: 'The cure for shame is to share'

Author and TV writer Chelsea Devantez experienced something unexpected after turning in her debut memoir I Shouldn't Be Telling You This (but I'm Going To Anyway), which contained the story of surviving an abusive relationship.

in the book, she notes her publisher requested that she redact or black-line aspects of the story. She chose to keep the entire chapter as-is, with the requested black lines included, to make a statement about the power of speaking out.

"I think one of the cures for shame is to share," says Devantez, who is also the host of the Glamorous Trash podcast, where she interviews celebrity memoirists like Busy Philipps and Delta Burke.

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"I feel like every time a woman shares her story, it shifts culture," she continues. But that doesn't mean she wasn't petrified to write about her own experience with domestic violence.

"I certainly felt trepidation," she says. "If I hadn't been working with a trauma therapist for the past decade, it would have been impossible. And even with all of this work under my belt, it's terrifying. But I feel like courage is always the hardest choice to make."

Devantez says she spent years avoiding the truth about her situation.

"I tried to make every other choice first. I tried to go to tarot readers, I tried to go to psychics, I tried to manifest my way out of this, and courage was my last choice," she says, of pretending that her relationship was perfectly normal.

"When I was in it, I truly thought I was living a normal life and my boyfriend was maybe going off the rails but I could talk him out of it, or he was just on a weird tear," she says. She notes that she rarely saw these types of relationships depicted on TV, in films or in books.

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"I never saw any art or writing where I could have noticed that I was in a violent relationship," she says. "And so I was hoping to put that art out myself. When the publisher redacted it, it was so much grief."

She adds, "Sharing is an actual antidote to shame. One of the cures for domestic violence is to get rid of shame because the reason we're not talking about it is because it's shameful. And then when you don't talk about it, and it's not in culture, then you can't recognize yourself in it."

Her hope for the book is that it encourages more people to come forward with their stories, to destigmatize the shame — especially now that she works in Hollywood.

"The first time it happened to me, I had no resources at all. It was just me and my single mom. We had no money," she explains.

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"Ten years later, when the case came back again, I also had no resources. I was a comedian performing for $100 a night. I was not equipped to have the case reopened. And now 10 years after all of that, I finally do have the resources, but our systems are just set up to silence victims in the name of protecting the accused."

She's looking forward to being a part of the change that needs to happen.

"I do hope it changes. There's that California law that Biden signed that doesn't allow NDAs and workplace contracts to stop victims from speaking out about harassment and violence. And so I feel like we're making baby steps."

She's also embracing a new era of her life, one in which she no longer feels the need to hide.

" I just want to enjoy what it's like to be free of all of the shame that I felt for most of my life," she says. "Knowing that I wrote about it in my book, I'm finally able to kind of let it go."

I Shouldn't Be Telling You This (But I'm Going to Anyway) is available now, wherever books are sold.

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