Finding Me by Viola Davis – 5⭐

I’ve struggled with reviewing this to be honest. I suspected that Viola Davis’s story wasn’t going to be all sunshine and roses, but I wasn’t prepared for the level of trauma this woman has experienced in her life.

“I knew my life would be a fight, and I realized this: I had it in me.”

I’m not sure I have it in me to really dig into just how horrific her childhood was, part of me was concerned there was going to be a certain level of toxic positivity, but I think that she has done tremendous work with therapy to get to the place she is today. She talks a lot about protecting her younger self, and it just about broke my heart. This is something a friend of mine has told me about during her own process of working through severe childhood trauma. It’s not an easy process and requires a lot of emotional work. Viola does talk about her therapy journey throughout the book. I’m so glad she had the wherewithal to start that journey early on in her life. I think it led her to a place where she could work through a lot of complex feelings she had about her family, her father in particular, and thankfully she got there before he passed away. I’m not sure I could ever get to the place she did, but I’m so happy she did. It’s very clear how important family is to her, and she has done so much work to heal in order to maintain those relationships. It’s commendable!  

“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.”

I’m of the opinion that every human being deals with trauma in their life differently and therefore everyone deals with the journey to healing differently. Just because one person takes steps that you couldn’t see yourself taking, doesn’t mean they are wrong. It’s their inner peace, not yours.

If you think that Viola Davis’s trauma ended with her childhood/teen years, you would be wrong. We just get different flavours of trauma. Something I appreciated was her account of how difficult it was for her, as a dark-skinned Black woman, to get parts that weren’t the drug-addicted Black mother stereotypes after she graduated. But what was even more interesting, and I hope is different now, was how much harder she had to work while in Juilliard compared to her white counterparts. Also, the lack of diversity while she was there. It’s so weird that this place is supposed to be one of the best places to go to learn the craft of acting and yet they have such little diversity both in the student body and on the curriculum, and then to expect so much more from the diverse students! I’d say it’s baffling but I think it wouldn’t take too much critical thinking to work out what was at play.

Davis is very frank about the level of racism in the acting industry, unfortunately it’s not surprising and it shouldn’t be up to her to educate people about not only the racism Black actors endure within this industry, but she also highlights the blatant misogynoir that seems to run rampant in the industry! This brings us to Shondaland and the role of Annalise Keating!

Side note: I know Shondaland is Shonda Rhimes production company, and she isn’t deeply involved in every single project, but I’m sure she is involved enough in everything for it to be a lot of work, and I dunno, I feel like we are asking too much of Shonda Rhimes! I really need to read ‘Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand in the Sun and Be Your Own Person’ soon, she is such a powerhouse. Also, I’m extremely salty about The Residence being cancelled after one season. Netflix is dumb! I sing that shows praises in Some shows I’ve loved recently… if you haven’t watched it yet I can’t recommend it enough, it was so clever and there was so much more they could have done.

So, Viola Davis was well known before How To Get Away With Murder. She’d been a journeyman actor for a long time, had a Tony under her belt and had starred in a blockbuster movie, but the role of Annalise Keating really was a turning point for her. She also used the role as way stand up against the misogynoir she and other Black women faced.

“Taking off the wig in How To Get Away With Murder was my duty to honor Black women by not showing an image that is palatable to the oppressor, to people who have tarnished, punished the image of Black womanhood for so long. It said all of who we are is beautiful. Even our imperfections.”

Along with the chapters about Davis’s star continuing to rise we also got to go along with the journey of her finding a romantic HEA and oh boy did I get emotional here! She had struggled with so much and it felt like, she felt like, she was never going to find someone special, and then along came Julius. I think the work she had been doing on herself through the years really prepared her for this part of her life. She deserved to be with a man who treated her like a queen, a man who would both support her and protect her. And then Genesis was added to their family! This was a truly beautiful part of her story. Viola Davis deserves her hard fought for happy ever after.

“I’m no longer ashamed of me. I own everything that has ever happened to me. The parts that were a source of shame are actually my warrior fuel.”

There were a million quotes throughout this book that I’d love to note and talk about how amazing they are, but one of the ones that stuck with me the most wasn’t actually directly attributed to Davis, but to a friend of hers.

“I have a Jewish friend who is Modern Orthodox. He said one of his rabbis said, “It’s futile to ask why. Instead ask yourself, ‘What did I learn from this?”

I’ve been thinking about this quote a lot since I finished the book. I’m very anti toxic positivity. I hate the phrase ‘Everything happens for a reason’ or anything vaguely resembling that sentiment, but this quote feels like an actual helpful tool. There might not always be a definitive answer to ‘what did I learn from this?’ it could simply be ‘I learned that I’m much stronger than I thought I was’ and I think it can be a good way of working through difficult situations in your life.  

I had wanted to end the review with that quote, but I think it’s more important to end it with the fact that in February 2023, Viola Davis was awarded the Grammy Award for ‘Best Audio Book, Narration & Storytelling Recording for the narration to this autobiography, making her the 18th person to achieve EGOT status.

Legendary!!