I watched the 'Barbie' movie with a picture of my murdered sister. The movie was the happy ending she never got.

• My sister Jess was murdered by her husband in 2016.
• I brought a photo of her holding my son the day she married her murderer to the movie theatre.

Greta Gerwig's billion-dollar "Barbie" movie brought a lot of feelings of feminism and empowerment forward, but to some, like me, it also brought forward feelings of unexpected grief.

I wanted to share the movie with my sister. Instead, I watched it with a photo of her holding my son the day she married the man who would become her murderer.

The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence reported in 2020 that "41.5% of women in Illinois experience intimate partner violence in their lifetimes." She was one of a growing number of women all over the US who have been victims of domestic violence.

We were totally different growing up

Growing up, we were the opposite in so many ways. My parents seemed to give us toys to occupy us that sometimes forced interactions with one another. For years, they dressed us in similar outfits in family photos to attempt to push us to bond. In our childhood, we were imaginative and silly to the extent that an outsider might have thought we might have even liked to be around each other. We would play with our dolls creating ridiculous stories of our future lives. Somewhere in a box is a Barbie cassette tape of many of those silly stories we created- coincidentally in reporter mode with our dolls and a cameo of the family dog Tuffy.

That era blurred forward fast, though. As we grew older, the days of Barbie-connected ambitions were thrown into toyboxes, forgotten with the magic and vibrant spirit of two sisters who were still figuring life out. We found ourselves on truly different paths. Although she wasn't blond, nor did she love pink, Jess took the more conventional girl-scout troop leader in suburban life ones while I leaned further into "weird Barbie" ones, frequently dying my hair silly colors and embracing artist ones.

She loved 'Push'

During the nineties, my sister and I inevitably got deep into music. It was an era of grunge and bubblegum rock that would wrap our worlds in ways we didn't fully realize. One of those songs would be among the ones in the soundtrack of Gertwig's new film: a song called "Push,"covered by Ryan Gosling that was originally done by Matchbox 20. My sister loved the band and that song in particular. It has haunted me for a long time. Were those moments back then foreshadowing the future of her not being alive any longer to see this with the folks who loved her?

The song was used in Ken's villain scene with specific intent. It was to express how Ken was leaving his sweet loving time to turn cold and embrace the darkness.

Hearing about the song being used in the film mortified me beyond belief when I learned of it. I remembered how the singer, Rob Thomas, had been interviewed for MTV talking about how it was about emotional abuse he'd endured, which didn't feel settling. Using it intentionally in the film's soundtrack stopped me in my tracks.

It's not fair that she's not here anymore

While the movie never went into the elements of abuse directly, the film had its colorful dressings of those tenants within it. I learned about this and what happened in the movie with Barbie communicating to Ken about how she needed to find her identity and not be responsible for his. It pushed me to see the movie to bring Jess to this. It's a healthy ending that she and so many abuse victims never get to.

We might have been different Barbies as we grew up, but this is one area we related to horrifyingly as we both have experienced abuse from our partners. It's not fair she's not here with me. I wanted her to share the film's happy ending with getting away safely. I wish I had been able to do more for her to help her get away before her husband ended her life to steal this moment in the theatre from us. However, in a small way, we were: laughing and crying in a theatre together about something that brought us joy in our childhood, if only for a couple of hours.