Finding Me

by Viola Davis

“Fame is a vapor. Popularity is an accident. Riches takes wings. And only one thing remains . . . CHARACTER.” —HORACE GREELEY

It’s like Oprah said, “I know for sure what we dwell on is what we become.” With this chapter in my life, I didn’t want to dwell on little Viola running away anymore. I wanted to run toward joy, hand in hand with Julius. I wanted to feel alive. I wanted to become . . . me.

Toni Morrison in The Bluest Eye says that “a person’s love is only as good as the person; a stupid person loves stupidly, a violent man loves violently.” The love of a man who puts you first, who is evolved and who always wants to be better for you, is Julius’s love capacity.

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.

I thought my money and success could save all of them. I learned the hard way that when there are underlying issues, money does nothing. In fact, money exacerbates the problem because it takes away the individual’s ability to be held accountable.

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.

It just came like bullets. One more tragedy to overcome. And once again, life continues. It keeps moving. It moves through deaths, tragedies. It doesn’t wait for you to recover or heal before hitting again.

What became apparent to me as he was dying was that we were his dream; his children and grandchildren were his dream. For a whole generation of Black people we were the dream. We were their hope. We were the baton they were passing as they were sinking into the quicksand of racism, poverty, Jim Crow, segregation, injustice, family trauma, and dysfunction.

“What do you want in your next husband?” asked Rose. And Dorothy says, “I want someone to grow old with.” That’s what most people don’t want. They want the young. They want the cute. When you get older, you change. You change physically. You change emotionally and a whole other area of life rears its head. Your body slows down, retirement; death becomes all too real. A lot of people are not in it for the long haul. They’re not in it for the changes the life journey brings—the health scares, death. I do want someone to grow old with.

All that kept playing out in my mind was, The purpose of life is to live it. The purpose of life is to live it.

“You can either leave something for people or you can leave something in people.” —ANNE LAMONT

My other issue was when Aibileen and the others were offered money and we refused it because we were so honorable; we felt it was more important for us to tell the story than take the money. I disagree. We would have taken the money. Being honorable is fantasy. Survival and how it brings out our nature is human.

It is a widely held belief that dark-skinned women just don’t do it for a lot of Black men. It’s a mentality rooted in both racism and misogyny, that you have no value as a woman if you do not turn them on, if you are not desirable to them. It’s ingrained thinking, dictated by oppression.

I said to myself: All I’ve got is me. And that is enough.

We are after all observers of life. We are after all a conduit, a channeler of people. What you haven’t resolved in your life can absolutely become an obstacle in the work that you do.

All that culminated into forgiveness. It was so suddenly released. It started with that slap. And with each slap, as God would have it, I thought of my mom. I thought of the difficulty of motherhood. Reconciling your pain. Fulfilling your needs and at the same time sacrificing, juggling the huge task of binding the family together. Shelving your dreams and hopes. I felt her. Fully . . . and it was beautiful.

I haven’t had a lot of princess moments in my life. I’ve never been comfortable in princess moments because I never felt like a princess. For the first time, I experienced what it feels like to know you deserve something. Not the feeling that you’re the best, not at all. Rather, like your hard work over the years meant something and amalgamated into this “perfect” moment.

It was an overflow of blessings that I could not even possibly have imagined for myself. What I have realized since is that those moments of feeling alive are part of a continuum. You find that moment. You bask in it. Then as soon as it passes, life becomes about chasing the next moment. I now understand that life, and living it, is more about being present. I’m now aware that the not-so-happy memories lie in wait; but the hope and the joy also lie in wait.

Memory is powerful. Powerful hardships as well as powerful successes make up a life fully lived . . . my life.

There’s the factual part of memory that has to do with details, timeline, but the other part of memory is abstract. How did I feel when this was happening? What did I want at that time? If the memory is bad, you try to forget it. Or you change the memory in order to survive. I am surprised that one of my most powerful memories involves me getting on my knees. It’s what happens when there are no answers in this world and no access to getting the answers.

The question still echoes, how did I claw my way out? There is no out. Every painful memory, every mentor, every friend and foe served as a chisel, a leap pad that has shaped “ME!” The imperfect but blessed sculpture that is Viola is still growing and still being chiseled. My elixir? I’m no longer ashamed of me.

I own everything that has ever happened to me. The parts that were a source of shame are actually my warrior fuel. I see people—the way they walk, talk, laugh, and grieve, and their silence—in a way that is hyperfocused because of my past.

I have a great deal of compassion for other people, but mostly for myself. That would not be the case if I did not reconcile that little eight-year-old girl and FIND ME. I’m holding her now. My eight-year-old self. Holding her tight. She is squealing and reminding me, “Don’t worry! I’m here to beat anybody’s ass who messes with our joy! Viola, I got this.”