‘This Is Us’ star Chrissy Metz recalls stepfather’s ‘painful’ abuse

Chrissy Metz is opening up about the way she continues to be affected by the abuse she says she experienced growing up.
During an appearance on “The Jamie Kern Lima Show” podcast on Monday, the “This Is Us” star, 44, reflected on being subjected to “mental, physical, (and) emotional abuse” from her stepfather.
“It is still very painful, if I really get to the root of it,” Metz said. “There’s still a lot of pain about all of that.”
Metz, who played Kate Pearson on the NBC drama series, said her stepfather would “weigh me in the kitchen or threaten to lock the cupboards.” She compared his alleged emotional abuse to “little cuts” and said that “eventually, you bleed out,” adding that she is still “trying to heal those wounds, slowly but surely, and it’s not easy.”
The Emmy-nominee previously wrote in her 2018 memoir “This Is Me: Loving the Person You Are Today” that after her parents got divorced when she was 8, her mom married a man nicknamed Trigger, who was allegedly verbally and physically abusive. She said she has no memory of “bonding” with her biological father, who she believes cheated on her mom.
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“My body seemed to offend him, but he couldn’t help but stare, especially when I was eating,” she wrote. “He never punched my face. Just my body, the thing that offended him so much. He shoved me, slapped me, punched my arm, and yanked my wrist. He would hit me if he thought I looked at him wrong.”
Reflecting on the “Jamie Kern Lima Show,” Metz said the abuse has impacted “everything” in her life.
“In the moment, I was devastated, and it affected the way I walked into every room,” she said. “I think it still affects the way I walk into a room. … It’s still something that I deal with. In any kind of relationship, in any kind of job that I want, I’m like, ‘Am I worthy of this?'”
Metz wondered whether her stepfather “actually loved me and didn’t know how to express it.” But “also, hurt people hurt people,” she said, “and I think he was very hurt by his own father.”
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The actress went on to reveal that her stepfather, who stopped speaking to her after she wrote about him in her memoir, recently died, and she felt “compelled” to write him a letter while he was in hospice.
“I was honest,” Metz recounted, sharing that she wrote to him, “I was very hurt, but I also love you very much, and I hope that you can forgive me for anything that you might be upset about, and I forgive you.”
Metz said she was on FaceTime while her sister read this letter to her stepfather, who told her, “Thank you. I love you.”
“That was very important for me,” Metz said. “And then when we were cleaning out my childhood home where he lived, he actually had my book with a book marker in it. And I was like, ‘OK, so he was trying.’ He really did try.”
While discussing her book in 2018, Metz shared on “The View” that she hoped fans would take away from her experience the lesson that “you can forgive anybody.”
Contributing: Erin Jensen, USA TODAY