Oscar-winning actress Viola Davis provides a heartbreaking but ultimately inspiring testimonial about enduring and then overcoming severe childhood trauma to live a life of emotional stability, financial freedom and restored faith in humanity.
Davis, 56, one of the preeminent actresses of all time who has also won an Emmy, a Golden Globe and two Tony Awards during her lionized career, shared her poignant story during the latest episode of “Today” co-host Hoda Kotb’s podcast, “Making Space with Hoda Kotb.”
The beloved Davis said at one point in her childhood she was in a state of constant torment and anxiety due to abuse at school and violence at home. Specifically, Davis vividly recalled being chased down by a group of boys and then punched in the face by one of them who demanded that she never call him “Black.”
“The young boy who, who literally was maybe a shade and a half lighter than me, who said, ‘You don’t call me Black. You don’t call me Black, Viola. You’re Black. I’m Portuguese.’ And he punched me,” she recalled.
“It was day after day. That’s what it felt like. Was I actually running for my life? Would they actually have killed me? I don’t know about that, but that’s what it felt like,” Davis told Kotb.
If being bullied and beaten by classmates weren’t enough, Davis’ personal tumult was exacerbated by the violence in the home.
“If I felt like I was running for my life from the eight or nine boys, I felt then I had to go into a home where I was running for my life,” Davis said. “That’s what it felt like when I would witness the violence between my mom and dad. I keep remembering these moments of violence that even happened at night in the middle of the street. And not one window opened. No one came out to help.”
Davis was emotionally crippled by her experiences which left her with an acute feeling of abject worthlessness.
“The power of that is just not how I was defined by those eight or nine boys. It’s how the world defined me. It’s that fear of being Black. What Black meant in that, in this powerful caste system we have of how you treat people based on perceived value and worth. And I was worthless. That’s what it told me. I was a child,” she said.
During a certain period in her adolescence, Davis said she “felt like I was running for my life, and I didn’t have any arms to run into. So I was just running.”
Flipping into survival mode, Davis said she reflexively crawled inside her head a lot to “dream” as a way to escape and later used her “drive and ambition to replace feeling and vulnerability.”
Fortunately, Davis was able to finally reconcile her pain sufficiently enough to be a paragon of overcoming for others. Click to listen to the podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/viola-davis-i-want-to-love-me/id1585499926?i=1000558582417
