Finding Me

by Viola Davis

This was one more piece of trauma I was experiencing—my clothes, my hair, my hunger, too—and my home life being the big daddy of them all. The attitude, anger, and competitiveness were my only weapons.

She didn’t have time to go to school every day and fight our battles. She absolutely needed me to know how to defend myself. Even if she had to threaten me into doing it.

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.”

“Can you hug her? Can you let her hug YOU?” he asked. “Can you let her be excited about the fifty-three-year-old she is going to become? Can you allow her to squeal with delight at that?”

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.

I learned from writer Joseph Campbell that 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. What is the adventure? A revolutionary transformation of self. The final goal is to find the elixir. The magic potion that is the answer to unlocking HER. Then she comes “home” to this ordinary life transformed and shares her story of survival with others.

It was a full embracing of what God made me to be. Even the parts that had cracks and where the molding wasn’t quite right. It was radical acceptance of my existence without apology and with ownership.

“The call to adventure signifies that destiny has summoned the hero. The hero, whether god or goddess, man or woman, the figure in a myth, or the dreamer of a dream, discovers and assimilates his opposites, his own unsuccessful self, either by swallowing it or by being swallowed.”

“Show me a hero and I’ll show you a tragedy.”

Imagine hauling your family from the South with all the hope in the world that you could do better. Yet all you have, all that you can do is not good enough to keep them alive and functioning.

It was a choice that had resounding repercussions. Abuse elicits so many memories of trauma that embed themselves into behavior that is hard to shake. It could be something that happened forty years ago, but it remains alive, present.

There is a very flimsy barrier between the asshole predators, abusers, and my mom. She is a “self-sacrificer” at the expense of her own joy.

He loved me. That I know. But his love and his demons were fighting for space within, and sometimes the demons won.

“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,”

There is an emotional abandonment that comes with poverty and being Black. The weight of generational trauma and having to fight for your basic needs doesn’t leave room for anything else. You just believe you’re the leftovers.

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.

We just wanted to win. We wanted to be somebody. We wanted to be SOMEBODY.

Our growing-up years were speckled with good moments. Happiness for me was Valentine’s Day. My father knew how to celebrate Valentine’s Day and other major holidays.

We continued to figure it out on our own in the absence of parents. Our parents were just trying to keep us alive the only way they knew how. They controlled what they could and injected ritual, joy, hope in little ways.

I was excited about getting the little piece of bread. When time came to take the bread of Christ, the priest leaned down and whispered, “Are you Catholic?” Dianne, with her mouth still open, ready, shook her head truthfully, “No.” He motioned for us to leave. I then realized why we had been so closely observed.

When I look back at what I’ve seen, my only thoughts are that it’s amazing how much a human body can endure. There are not enough pages to mention the fights, the constantly being awakened in the middle of the night or coming home after school to my dad’s rages and praying he wouldn’t lose so much control

There was an expectation of perfectionism without the knowledge of emotional well-being. What it left in me was confusion. How do I get to the mountaintop without legs? But we constantly push it with kids now and when you’re a poor kid growing up with trauma, no one is equipping you with tools to do “better,” to “make a life.”

All that was inside me that I couldn’t work out in my life, I could channel it all in my work and no one would be the wiser. And if I was good at it, I could make a life. It was perfect. . . . All of it was a perfect alchemy for healing, acceptance, and worthiness.

When you haven’t had enough to eat, when your electricity and heat are cut off, you’re not afraid when someone says life is going to be hard.

“May you live long enough to know why you were born.”

Looking back, I see I had more social anxiety than shyness. I felt that who I really was, was not worthy of a reveal. I was terrified every time she had to come out.

If I created a fable of my life, a fantasy, I see myself finally meeting God, gushing, crying, thanking the Almighty for the accolades, a fabulous husband, beautiful daughter, my journey from nothing to Hollywood, awards, travel. I can clearly see the Lord’s face, staring at me, taking me in and saying, “You never thanked me for creating you as YOU.”

“You know what, I’m just going to do it.” That was when much of the depression fell away. The cure was courage. The courage to dare, risking failure.

Working hard is great when it’s motivated by passion and love and enthusiasm. But working hard when it’s motivated by deprivation is not pleasant.

Without the Preparatory Enrollment Program, there would have been zero students of color because we were starting with major deficits. Most destructive was the view that we weren’t worthy.

Whether you have an education or not, the ugliness of racism comes down like a hammer. It enveloped my life when I was eight and at twenty-three, I was still bullied by it. When you have little to no money, there’s no way to combat it.

I was so unfinished. I asked God for a boyfriend, professional acting status, and the experience of traveling overseas. But I didn’t ask for wisdom. I didn’t ask for self-love. And it showed.

this was life in NYC. The concrete jungle filled with fast-moving, hardworking, dream-filled people trying to make it.

batiks were exquisite works of art.

Luck is an elusive monster who chooses when to come out of its cave to strike and who will be its recipient.

The fact that it was hard, shitty, was nothing new, but the biggest struggle was keeping hope and a belief in myself.

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

“I’ve been in this business a while and have seen a lot of stage parents. It becomes more about them and not about their kids. Your parents are not that way at all. They just want to see you fly. They’re just happy for you.” It was a seed planted that made me look at my parents in a completely different light. It woke me up.

“Viola, what if you didn’t change all the parts of yourself that you are not happy with? What if you just stayed, you? Could you be happy with that? Could you still love yourself?”

“Okay, this is what I want you to do. When you go to bed at night, I want you to get on your knees and ask God for exactly what you want.”

“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,

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.

“Man got plan but God? He got plan too.” Well, I believed God loved me enough to cradle me and protect me from pain.

I was silent, knowing life happens, there’s no pause button, no editor to change an outcome to something that fits the limitation of your heart.

A part of me began to understand the importance of time. I was trying to freeze it. It was especially driven home by how much time my career was taking up. It made me appreciate and value it as a life goal. I wanted to take in every part of their faces, hands, laughs, stories.

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.

But what did I say about life? It never stops. We always hope that it lands in our favor. At least, that’s how stories play out onscreen. There is living life for pleasure, great moments, and living life waiting for doom and gloom. Life exists somewhere in the middle.

The purpose of life is to live it.