One would think that being married to a man on his way to changing the world — and raking in billions while doing it — might feel like a front-row seat to something extraordinary. But for Justine Musk, it felt more like disappearing in plain sight.
As Elon climbed the ladder of success, she says she lost track of the person she used to be: a writer, a thinker, a partner — not just a blonde fixture in the background of someone else's empire.
And then came the moment that snapped it all into focus: a car crash that didn't kill her, but cracked everything open.
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In her 2010 Marie Claire essay, Justine described it as a "wake-up call." She'd made a wrong turn, gotten hit, and ended up on the side of the road with a wrecked luxury car and a wrecked sense of self. But it wasn't the collision that shook her most.
"I barely recognized myself," she wrote. "I had turned into a trophy wife — and I sucked at it."
She wasn't thinking about airbags or broken bones. She was thinking about him.
And in her 2014 TED Talk, she put it even more bluntly:
"My first thought was not ‘Thank God I'm alive.' It wasn't ‘Thank God nobody's hurt.' It was, ‘My husband is going to kill me because I wrecked the car.'"
That moment, she said, was more than just a crash.
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She continued, "This was my wake-up call. I had gotten to the point where I was more concerned about my husband's disapproval than the fact that I could have killed myself or somebody else."
She'd been running herself into the ground — agreeing to things she didn't want to do, pushing herself to be thinner, blonder, quieter. She didn't belong to herself anymore. She belonged to the performance. The image. The role of supportive wife in a billionaire's world.
On the curb, trembling, with a police officer's water bottle in hand, she knew she couldn't keep going like this. Not for the kids. Not for the marriage. Not for the version of her that once had fire.
Justine says they tried counseling, but just a month and three sessions later, Elon gave her an ultimatum: "Either we fix this marriage today or I will divorce you tomorrow." He filed for divorce the next day.
It wasn't the dramatic ending people might expect. There was no massive blow-up. The damage had been slow, quiet, and cumulative. Like the crash, it built up quietly, until it didn't.
The car crash didn't take her life. But it gave her something else..the first real reason to take it back.
Justine found her voice again by writing, telling her story, and rejecting the idea that success means dimming your light for someone else's spotlight.
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