Bits and Pieces: My Mother, My Brother, and Me

by Whoopi Goldberg

From as early on as I remember, my mother would say to me, “Listen. The confines of this neighborhood do not represent the confines of your life. You can go and do and be whatever you want. But, whatever you choose, be yourself.”

“You’ve got two choices. You can waste a lot of time complaining, or you can get up and figure out how to fix it.”

Her whole day-to-day perspective was to live in the most practical manner possible. For my mom, that meant not letting other people’s opinions take your attention or energy. She thought the most important opinion was what you thought of yourself and how you lived your life.

These two men, who were barely ever around my mom, approved of her having experimental electroshock therapy.

“Listen, there are going to be terrible things that happen in the world. And there’s nothing you can do about them. They are what they are. But your decision is going to have to be, ‘Do I allow those bad things to stunt my growth as a human being? Am I just going to sit down and die over it? Or am I going to try to figure out how to be better?’ Which one do you think is a waste of time?”

“You have to understand. They don’t know anybody like you. They can’t imagine that you know about art, music, world history . . . anything. This is not your problem. This is a look inside what’s lacking in their world, not yours. The only people that they know who are like you either work for them or are people they only know in passing. They aren’t having conversations with those people.”

This is why my mother told me to be forgiving of what people don’t know and help them understand instead of walking away mad.

Her attitude was if you believe in God, then you have to believe that God is really smart and made us smart enough to know how to maneuver through this life.

Then she gave me some sage advice. “You want to get a gift from the studio every time you work,” she told me.

“What do you mean?” “Listen, I ask for a present for every film I do, something I can remember my career by,” she told me. “You’re going to put all these agents’ and managers’ kids through private high schools and the best colleges. You’re going to pay for the plastic surgery for the different faces of their various wives. Because of your career, you are going to take care of a lot of people. So ask for a nice gift in return. Don’t be piggy about it, but it’s okay to ask for it.” I listened to her, especially when she said, “A career goes up and down like this.” She waved her hand like the dips and peaks of a roller coaster. “Your career is going to be a little different because you are black. You should have something that will remind you in the hard times that you were an actor in films. Something that you can look over at and say in ten or fifteen years, ‘Yeah, I was here. I know because these guys gave me this piece of art, or this jewelry, for doing this movie.’ It doesn’t have to be something ridiculous in price. Just enough. It doesn’t hurt anybody. It comes out of their budget.” I pointed out that that might work if you’re Elizabeth Taylor. But she was right, and she fought for everything she ever got her whole career. She made it part of her contract. She gave a lot and expected something to keep. So that’s what my agents and managers did for me. I currently have my art collection and a lot of the things I have because ET told me they would be a chronicle of my ca...

The loss of your mom is the loss of the first person who ever looked at you and thought, This is my baby. Regardless of whether she raised you all the way through, you were still a part of her in the beginning. She was the first person who looked at you and thought, Okay, wow. Here we go.

If you were put in the arms of a woman who took it on herself to be your mom, that’s the person who made sure you stayed alive. She fed you. You peed on her. You threw up on her. And she still took care of you, talked to you, and got you to the point where you could do more for yourself. So she was the first connection in your life. When you’re a kid, you never think about that relationship coming to an end. Even as you get older, you don’t let your mind fully accept that she’s not going to be there someday.

My best advice to anybody who has lost their mom is to find a way to celebrate her life. Regardless of what your relationship was with her, figure out how to find some humor in who she was and your life with her.

Even if you don’t get to say it to your mom, at least recognize that she might have responded to you the way her parents responded to her as a little kid. She probably did the best she could with little information. Chances are your mom grew up in a family that never talked about their feelings. Maybe they only had the time to figure out how to keep shelter over their heads and enough food for the day. Or maybe they were raised in a strict household where there was no room for a mistake or even individuality. Take a deeper look. It’s all more complicated than we like to think.

I always wanted her to know that she was the best mother for me. She not only gave birth to me, but she gave life to my outlook, my confidence, and my dream. Every November 13, my birthday, I would have flowers sent to my mother with a card that read: “Thanks for letting me rent the room.”

think that’s my new mission: to be more appreciative of my days, like my mom. Because there’s no doubt: I am the luckiest person in the world.