Finding Me

by Viola Davis

You’re in the process of healing yourself, you’re running on reserves. Success is absolutely wonderful, but it’s not who you are.

The men I had dated wanted to come over to my apartment to do the Boom Ghazi.

Lol

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.

Hmph!

“Man got plan but God? He got plan too.”

I thought I could save them. 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.

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.

The funeral was devastating, but they did a great job with Daddy. He looked beautiful. Because he was so sick, he was emaciated, but they made him look great. That sounds macabre but it helped me a lot to look down at my dad and see my dad, not the sick, dying dad, but my dad.

When my dad passed, part of my heart went with him that’s never coming back. I feel the same way about Julius. I feel the same way about my child, my mom, sisters. It’s one heart. They are completely entwined in my spirit.

I was forty-seven when I got How to Get Away with Murder.

Taking off the wig in HTGAWM was my duty to honor Black women by not showing an image that is palatable to the oppressor, to people who have tarnished, punished the image of Black womanhood for so long. It said all of who we are is beautiful. Even our imperfections. With How to Get Away with Murder, I became an artist in the truest sense of the word.

As Black women, we are complicated. We are feminine. We are sexual. We are beautiful. We’re pretty. There are people out there who desire us. We are deserving. So that’s why I’m very aware of what my presence means.

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.

“God! If you love me, you would take me away from this place! I don’t want to be here anymore! I’m going to close my eyes and count to ten. And when I open them, I better be gone or I’ll know you don’t exist! One. Two. Three . . .” I kept my eyes shut, really believing that God would take me. “. . . Eight . . . Nine . . . TEN!” Silence. I opened my eyes. I was still there. Alone. Aware of my aloneness. I said softly, “I knew you didn’t exist.”

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.”