Elizabeth Smart Saw Her 'Terrifying' Lifetime Movie Alone: 'I Never Want to Watch It Again'

Elizabeth Smart may have been heavily involved in the making of the Lifetime movie about her 2002 abduction, but that didn’t make seeing the finished project any easier.

Smart was taken from her bedroom and brutalized by her captors for nine months before being rescued when she was just 14.

Smart also revealed that her family — including husband of over five years Matthew Gilmour and their two children, 2-year-old Chloe and 8-month-old James — was not present when she actually viewed the film.

• Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter.

Smart recently told PEOPLE that despite her ordeal, she feels she has much for which to be thankful.

“My children have brought so much happiness and joy,” she explained. “To me, they’re the very definition of love.”

Smart met her husband while both were serving missions for the Mormon Church in France. But she wondered 15 years ago if a normal life and motherhood would ever be possible.

“Today, I’m so grateful for the small things,” she told PEOPLE.

“I’m grateful for rain, because when I was kidnapped, that meant that I had something to drink,” she shared. “I was grateful for when people would throw out their leftovers at restaurants in those doggy bags, because that meant that sometimes I had something to eat. I’m grateful for the sunshine, because it warmed me when I was cold. Certainly, I was grateful for my family and who they were and who my parents were.”

Smart said, “I wake up every morning and I feel like a very lucky and blessed woman.”

Her horrific ordeal is never far from her mind, however.

And she hopes the film will also tell her story.

“I decided to do [the movie] because they wanted me involved every step of the way, and I thought it might also help other victims and survivors,” she said.