— People (@people) April 12, 2022
In addition to the Showtime series Viola Davis is producing and starring in, The First Lady, she also has a memoir coming out called Finding Me. Viola has always been honest about her impoverished past and her imposter syndrome. But in her memoir, Viola gives details that she’s left out from her past. Viola describes how traumatic her childhood was, detailing her abject poverty, the sexual abuse she and her sisters survived, having rocks thrown at her because she was black and watching her father physically and emotionally abuse her mother for years. Even though her father, who has since passed away, caused her pain, Viola forgave him before he died, which she now sees as her legacy.
Viola Davis has learned all about the power of forgiveness.
Growing up in deep poverty in Central Falls, R.I., Davis, 56, endured trauma and heartbreak: being so hungry she and her five siblings had to dumpster-dive for food; incessant bullying from boys who threw rocks at her for being Black.
Davis also experienced the physical and emotional abuse her father, Dan, inflicted on her mother, Mae Alice, for years. A horse groomer who left school after second grade, Dan regularly beat his wife. Before he died of pancreatic cancer in 2006, he made peace with Mae Ellen, who stayed with her husband of 48 years until the end.
“My dad changed,” Davis explains. “My mom said he apologized to her every single day. Every single day, he rubbed her feet. Forgiveness is not pretty. Sometimes people don’t understand that life is not a Thursday-night lineup on ABC. It is messy. He did hurt me then, but love and forgiveness can operate on the same plane as anger.”
Davis healed her relationship with her father as well before he died. “I wanted to love my dad,” she says. “And here’s the thing: My dad loved me. I saw it. I felt it. I received it, and I took it. For me, that’s a much better gift and less of a burden than going through my entire life carrying that big, heavy weight of who he used to be and what he used to do. That’s my choice. That’s my legacy: forgiving my dad.”
[From People]
Finding the power to forgive that kind of trauma is extraordinary. I understand the drive of wanting to love or forgive the person though. Not making a concession to forget about it just to move on, but actually forgiving the damage. It’s hard. I know that love and anger can operate on the same plane but for forgiveness and anger to operate on the same plane takes a very compassionate and strong individual. I hope I’m that person someday. I’m happy Viola got this for herself. Not many do, not in such a genuine sense as she sought for herself. But she did the work she needed to to get there. I’m glad it brought her the peace she needed as well.
Elsewhere in her interview, Viola talked about reconciling her past with her present. She said that people told her to focus on everything she’d become but that forced her to ignore the strong child who overcame such adversity. She said, “Everything I’ve experienced is what connects me to the world. It’s given me an extraordinary sense of compassion. It’s reconciling that young girl in me and healing from the past — and finding a home.” Viola talked about how she, “reinvented all the things that I wanted to and tossed away the rest of it.” But writing this memoir made her look back at the little “spitfire” she was and what it took to survive, and it connected the two sides of her. I very much needed this perspective. I understand the need to shut things out to move on. But as a person who has wondered what happened to the person I once was, Viola has made me rethink how I’m looking back on my life. If I keep erasing the parts attached to the trauma, I lose the person who got through it.
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