Thicker than Water: A Memoir

by Kerry Washington

From where I sat in that car, the appearance of wealth seemed to hold more value than the worth of the land itself. I learned that appearances matter, and that to be thought of as wealthy or powerful or successful was a goal worth pursuing, whether it was true or not.

I did not lack for food, clothing, shelter, or culture—or any number of nice things—but I longed for an authentic connection with my parents.

When I am in the water, I am at peace, and when I am submerged, between breaths, I feel most at home with myself, in my body.

My prayer is that their spirits remain as powerful and buoyant on land as they are in the water. And in the light of day as well as at night.

FINE can be an acronym for fucked-up, insecure, neurotic, and emotional.

“My therapist told me the cruelest thing you can ever do to another human being is to label their suspicions as false when you know them to be true.” His therapist explained that when you teach a person to believe that their internal truth is a lie, you take from them the very thing that is most important to each of us—our ability to know and trust ourselves.

When he denied it three times—“You’re crazy; you made that up in your head; I don’t know what you’re talking about”—something inside me shattered.

I decided that he would not survive me telling, and that of the two of us, I was probably the one best equipped to hold this trauma and live with the truth of it.

No maam

One of the consequences of growing up in a household with half-truths is that there is no space for trust to thrive.

Even today, there is the inevitable code-switching and double consciousness required for survival as a Black person in America, but that shape-shifting can be empowering. As an adult, I’ve told myself that I was not abandoning myself to fit in—I was flexing my capacity to feel at home in diverse environments. But if I’m honest, it’s not until recently that I’ve begun to understand how to be an integrated person who moves fluidly through different spaces as herself.

Sameeeeeee

But food as emotional comfort can be problematic. When food is detached from physical nourishment and used predominantly as a tool to either feel better or feel nothing, there comes a time when there is not enough food in the world to fill the void.

Wheeew I needed to hear this

That lack of firm understanding of who we are is a universal truth for Black people in the diaspora. Still, Africa, we are taught, is our motherland, and I wondered if she would embrace me.

the fiery chemistry between Tony Goldwyn and me,

Thats real sis lol

A great deal of the filming took place on an actual plantation—Evergreen Plantation in Edgard, Louisiana, near New Orleans—and throughout the process, the cast and crew often felt we were communing with our ancestors, surrounded by ghosts.

Blood may be thicker than water, but love is thicker than blood.

What I’m learning to do in my life is accept the void, let my dad who raised me be the center of his story, let my biological donor be the center of his, while I focus on being the center of my own story and seeking a deeper truth for myself.