Thicker than Water: A Memoir

by Kerry Washington

Stoicism has always been one of her talents. I often joke that she spent her entire life learning how to not have feelings, only to be gifted with a highly emotional child. But my mother wasn’t cold. She was poised. Graceful. Controlled. The kind of woman you trust with a secret you want to take to the grave.

on land, in my bathing suit, I learned to restrict my body, to hold my breath, and to pretend. But in the water, I could be free.

To a child of color, the message was clear: You had to be exceptional. You could either be excellent or require special needs. Otherwise, you’d get lost.

We were a fairy-tale portrait of success. And this was the only show I knew—we performed it all day long, and for years. This script was how we tried to avoid pain, messiness, and discomfort.

I think my mother was trapped in the fun-house version of her dream, an upside-down reality filled with anger, fear, and resentment.

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.

I started to understand the power of representation, the need for people to see themselves in the content they consume, but also the power of content to change how they think and feel and behave.

as an actor you are both the producer and the product, the marketer and marketed, the driver of innovation and the passenger on the unpredictable ride that is show business.

the seeds of perfectionism had blossomed into self-contempt.

I was shocked by the power I had drawn from mindful movement, and then by the feelings the simplicity of silence and stillness had evoked in me. Safety had led to grief.

I wanted my characters to be in a story of their own. I didn’t want to be an accessory to a white woman’s journey.

I have come to understand the inherent vulnerability of motherhood, and Black motherhood in particular—the fear and anxiety that develops when faced with the powerlessness of parenting a Black child who must navigate and attempt to survive the racism that is ingrained in our culture and institutions.

“We have nothing to be afraid of. There’s nothing that we will uncover that will tarnish who we are today.”

My parents’ obfuscation of who I was had led to a family culture of veiled secrecy and the avoidance of intimate truths, and in that void, I had been left alone to make sense of the disconnection and isolation that haunted our home. Those were the dynamics that protected their narrative.

his denial of his limitations and my willingness to be swept away in fantasy had put us in treacherous waters.

It’s true: We are as sick as our secrets, and there is healing in community.

As our children challenge us, if we remain committed to serving their highest good, I believe they move us closer to our best selves.

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

I stood at the center of our magic, cloaked in truth—and in the reality of blood and shit and gauze and laughter—and I conjured our healing, with my father as my apprentice.

I didn’t know my body; I couldn’t read its signs. I didn’t rest when I was tired, didn’t register when I was hungry, couldn’t decipher when I was full. Over time, my body became my enemy, and I couldn’t bear the discomfort of being fully present in my skin. I sensed that my embodiment scared my mother and threatened my dad. Presence itself—being fully alive and aware—became something to avoid. The fuel that had powered our family was pretending.

I find healing when I’m in water because the one voice I hear clearly is my own.