Finding Me

by Viola Davis

Memories are immortal. They’re deathless and precise. They have the power of giving you joy and perspective in hard times. Or, they can strangle you. Define you in a way that’s based more in other people’s tucked-up perceptions than truth.

It is a powerful memory because it was the first time my spirit and heart were broken.

“Why are you trying to heal her? I think she was pretty tough. She survived.”

But in my mind, no one cares about the conditions in which the unwanted live. You’re invisible, a blame factor that allows the more advantaged to be let off the hook from your misery.

The potency and power of tradition is deep.

“Miss, Deloris cheated.” And without missing a beat the teacher called Deloris up to her desk, took her test from her, and put a big, red F on it. She was devastated!! But she said this was a teacher who simply never liked her because she always got straight As. She was the same teacher who told me in second grade that Black people could not read or write at all when they were slaves. I told Deloris I was sorry that happened to her and we didn’t help her. She said, “That’s okay, Viola. That was the day I decided to be a teacher. It devastated me so much that I didn’t want another kid to go through what I went through.”

“shit or get off the pot.”

Free from the chains of my excuses, I was handling my business and exercising my agency, instead of sitting around doing nothing. And claiming that agency was a win in and of itself.

“A hard head makes a soft ass.” That means some lessons you have to learn the hard way.

Being transparent is saying, “I’m always anxious. I never feel like I fit in. I need help.” I wasn’t transparent.

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

Stanislavski, Sanford Meisner, Stella Adler, all teachers from the famed Actors Studio, said to study life. It’s those moments that you study in life that get injected into your work. You’re creating human beings. You’re not just creating a different walk, a different manner of speech, and a different emotional life.

So . . . honey don’t try to label or define me, cuz I’m not who I was ten years ago or ten minutes ago. I’m all of that and then some. And whereas I can’t live inside yesterday’s pain, I can’t live without it.”

“Stop making love to something that’s killing you.”

“It’s futile to ask why. Instead ask yourself, ‘What did I learn from this?’”

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.

Forgiveness is giving up all hope of a different past. They tell you successful therapy is when you have the big discovery that your parents did the best they could with what they were given.

The purpose of life is to live it.