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 was on a day off from shooting How to Get Away with Murder.

omg, i super loved this series!!

One of the beauties of getting older is really getting to know a parent.

Abuse elicits so many memories of trauma that embed themselves into behavior that is hard to shake.

“Viola, you don’t want to live like this when you get older, do you?”

“You need to have a really clear idea of how you’re going to make it out if you don’t want to be poor for the rest of your life. You have to decide what you want to be. Then you have to work really hard,” she whispered.

“He who has a ‘why’ to live for can bear with almost any ‘how.’” —FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Shame completely eviscerates you, destroys any sense of pride you may have in yourself.

Still, in the midst of the life shitstorm, there was one teeny, tiny light. A guide. A whisper. A voice. That one question from my Dianne. “What do you want to be?”

The constantly being beaten down so much makes you begin to feel that you’re wrong. Not that you did wrong, but you were wrong. It makes you so angry at your abuser, the one that you’re too afraid to confront, so you confront the easiest target. Those you can.

The loss of any pet is hard, but it’s especially hard when they serve a larger purpose that is fulfilling the deficit of loyalty and love.

Death, adulthood, responsibilities. All the stuff I never studied in school and no one talks about.

The purpose of life is to live it.

I was at the point in my life where I chose me.

I achieved on a different level than awards. I was finding me.