Finding Me

by Viola Davis

“You know that was not your fault. It was not your fault. I’m giving you permission to forgive yourself. Your parents were wrong for beating you. It was an accident. You should not have even been in that position.”

“Ya honor! These muthafucking kids keep messin’ with my children! Every time my children come home from school, they outside blocking they way in, hitting them, trying to beat them up! I got tired of it!

“But Mrs. Davis. Mrs. Davis! You cannot hit other people’s children. It’s illegal.”

“Ya honor, I’m tryin’ to tell you, I had enough! They somethin’ wrong with those people. I had to protect my children!”

There is an emotional abandonment that comes with poverty and being Black. The weight of generational trauma and having to fight for your basic needs doesn’t leave room for anything else. You just believe you’re the leftovers.

“Mrs. Davis, I’m so sorry for how I acted back in the day, but I missed my mom.

But the worst part is, deep inside there was a demon, and another part of me that was wrestling with the “alive” me. She, the demon, kept whispering, “You’re not good.” But the other part, the fighter, the survivor, screamed back a resounding, “No!”

It was Miss Cicely Tyson in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. She had a long neck and was beautiful,

To be human is not to be God.

“May you live long enough to know why you were born.”

“You never thanked me for creating you as YOU.”

It was trying to save someone else when I was drowning.

Let me prove to you that I have talent instead of just, being.

“Jump, and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall.” —RAY BRADBURY

“I did not come here for food. My stomach is full. I did not come here for food. I came for much more than that.”

“Girl, get up! Girl, get your fight back! Girl, get your power back! Girl, start acting like you are a King’s daughter and there has always been a crown attached to your head. Even when I was sick, I was still His! Even when I was dead, I was still His. Do you know who I am?” —SARAH JAKES ROBERTS

Anton Chekhov, the great Russian playwright, once said, “The same time you’re laughing hysterically, your life is falling apart.” It is the definition of living.

My fibroids were growing. I would bleed for weeks at a time. I was badly anemic. I had alopecia areata. I woke up and on the right side of my head, my hair was gone. It was clean as a baby’s butt. The knee-jerk response is go to the doctor. I would’ve if I had had health insurance. I could go to cheap clinics, but fibroids, anemia, alopecia required comprehensive care. Ongoing help from qualified ob-gyns and dermatologists. It would be years before I made enough to qualify for Plan 1 health insurance or Equity insurance.

My biggest discovery was that you can literally re-create your life. You can redefine it. You don’t have to live in the past. I found that not only did I have fight in me, I had love. By the time we clicked, I had had enough therapy and enough friendship and enough beautiful moments in my life to know what love is and what I wanted my life to feel and look like. When I got on my knees and I prayed to God for Julius, I wasn’t just praying for a man. I was praying for a life that I was not taught to live, but for something that I had to learn. That’s what Julius represented.

“Daddy, it’s okay if you go,” I told him. “You don’t have to be in pain anymore, all right?”

The exact same words I told my grandma in December of 2024 !! This shattered my heart ❤️

When my dad passed, part of my heart went with him that’s never coming back.

Exactly how I feel about my grandma

I found out weeks later when I had the courage to look up how to comfort the dying that they don’t feel heat or cold in the end. They usually have visions of people in their life who had passed before them. They have them because they need permission to cross over. You have to validate that. You keep their lips moist and give them little sips of water if they can take it. Most importantly, the number one comfort is this . . . hold their hand. My daddy was gone.