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.

Powerful quote

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

The final stretch to finding me would be allowing that eight-year-old girl in, actively inviting her into every moment of my current existence to experience the joy she so longed for, letting her taste what it means to feel truly alive. The destination is finding a home for her. A place of peace where the past does not envelop the Viola of NOW, where I have ownership of my story.

a hero is someone born into a world where they don’t fit in. They are then summoned on a call to an adventure that they are reluctant to take.

It was radical acceptance of my existence without apology and with ownership.

My journey was like a war movie, where at the end, the hero has been bruised and bloodied, traumatized from witnessing untold amounts of death and destruction, and so damaged that she cannot go back to being the same woman who went to war.