Thicker than Water: A Memoir

by Kerry Washington

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.

And I want her to have her story, too.

“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.

I am built with a sometimes codependent need to see things from another person’s perspective, to understand them, to justify their feelings and their behavior and to experience their reality as my own.

After that, I was determined to never disappoint my mother again. I would still lie, yes, but I resolved to never get caught. I became a much better liar, more calculating, more convincing, more immersive.

To find that belonging, I needed room to explore and discover who I was. I needed to cast a wide net and make sure that the people I’d be meeting would expand my world, and that the opportunities to discover myself would be wide-ranging.

When I opened the DVD player, I found that someone had left a disc of season one of Friends inside.

Reading this line while also reading Matthew Perry's book, after his death. Oh my.

In some ways, my worldview became very small, and my circle of trust shrank.

I revealed my emotional truth to embody and honor hers. Offering up of some part of myself, in service of Anita Hill’s truth, allowed me catharsis and healing. And for that I will be forever grateful.

They had entered into an illusory contract with each other to lie to everyone, including me, and themselves, about the truth of our biological ties and the reality of my origins. And now, here we were, forty-one years later, the original lie between us exposed, the truth laid bare.

I thought about how, when I was pregnant the second time, I made a point to reassure my toddler about the arrival of her brother by explaining that my heart would not now be cut in half, but that my capacity for love would instead double.

My job that night was to be the gracious host, the perfect child, the good girl. The solution.

When my kids go to bed at night, before I leave the room, I almost always say, “Thank you for choosing me.” This phrase came to me when I was reading a book called The Conscious Parent by Shefali Tsabary. In her book, Tsabary argues that we have traditionally gotten a key element of parenting backward. We have been taught to think that kids come into the world and it is our job to mold them, guide them, and help turn them into the people they’re meant to be. Tsabary believes that our job is not to make our children better; rather, our children are opportunities for us to become better, to serve them, and to make room for who they are meant to be. The idea resonated with me because it reminded me of one of my favorite Buddhist teachings. I was once at a meditation retreat with Pema Chödrön, an ordained Buddhist nun, where she told the parable of two friends sitting together before their souls incarnated and arrived on Earth. In the story, one soul turns to the other and says, “I want you to grow. I love you so much that I will choose to be your biggest teacher in this lifetime. In our lives together, I will cause you great pain and suffering and our relationship will teach you to move closer to the Divine.” As our children challenge us, if we remain committed to serving their highest good, I believe they move us closer to our best selves.