Oscar award winning actress Viola Davis says she is learning 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.
“How you react is based on survival,” the Tony, Oscar and Emmy winner, 56, tells PEOPLE in this week’s cover story while discussing her new memoir, “Finding Me”. “The key is to survive. I did what was at my hand to do at 8 years old. I fought. And that fighting served me because I’m still on my feet.”
Davis also experienced the physical and emotional abuse her father, Dan, inflicted on her mother, Mae Alice, for years. Dan regularly beat his wife. Before he died of pancreatic cancer in 2006.
“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 line up on ABC. It is messy. He did hurt me then, but love and forgiveness can operate on the same plane as anger.”
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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, 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.”
Married to her husband of almost 19 years, actor Julius Tennon, 68, and mom to their daughter Genesis, 11, Davis is now grateful for every part of her journey. “I count it all as joy. I do. All of those things happened to me, but I own it. And it’s a part of who I am.”
“It’s given me an extraordinary sense of compassion,” she adds. “It’s reconciling that young girl in me and healing from the past and finding home.”
“Finding Me” will be released on April 26.
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