Kerry Washington: Embracing Your Truth and Finding Unconditional Love

0:00I have a brand new book called Make Money Easy. and if you're looking to create more financial freedom in your life, you want abundance in your life and you want to stop making money hard in your life, but you wanna make it easier, you wanna make it flow, you wanna feel abundant, then make sure to go to makemoneyeasybook.com right now and get yourself a copy. I really think this is gonna help you transform your relationship with money this moment moving forward. We have some big guests and content coming up. Make sure you're following and stay tuned to this episode of The Daily Motivation Show.

0:38Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to The Daily Motivation Show.

0:49When did you start to feel like you were enough? Was it before the lie was revealed or after the lie was revealed? I feel like from the moment that I went into therapy in college, those days of like getting on my knees and being like, somebody help me. I feel like I've been on this journey of trying to feel like enough, of like picking up tools throughout the decades of like, I know I should feel like enough. And so I like I know that that like we're all perfectly imperfect. We're all children of God. Like I should wake up in the morning and not hate myself. Like we all deserve that. And so I've been trying to cultivate, like, what does that take?

1:32What will that look like? What do I have to do? Different healing practices, different modalities and yoga and Pilates and therapy and group therapy and introspection. And so I have been on that walk, but I do think, and it's gradual, right? It's not like you wake up one day and you're like, I'm healed now. But I do think my parents offering me this deeper truth about who I am and where I come from, it like gave me permission to relax into who I am and to be like, I'm good. Yeah. I'm okay. Now, do you feel like before that truth was revealed that you were able to fully relax into your relationship with your parents?

2:14Even though they were loving to you and supported you and encouraged you? No. You don't feel like you were able to? No. And again, I've always had a really loving relationship with my parents. I have incredible parents and they have given me so many tools, consciously and unconsciously. They've been a tremendous part of the story of me getting to where I am today. I'm not where I am despite my parents. I'm mostly where I am because of my parents. And then there is a little bit of despite those dynamics, I wound up here. So I do, I think I've, I had a really good relationship with my parents, but I have a great relationship with my parents now because of the gift of truth that they've offered us.

2:58You always felt like something was off. Yeah. I felt like something was missing. Did you ever ask them like, Hey guys, what's going on? Like in your twenties and thirties, like, is there something off? Are you guys not sharing something with me? What's funny is that there were these kind of smaller revelations throughout my childhood. Like I talk about in the book, how my dad was kind of involved in this investigation. And so when I learned about that, I was like, oh, this is what it was, right? Like they're hiding this. Yes. There were these, I think the culture of my family was kind of hide the truth to look good.

3:32And like, we should we should do whatever it takes to like look good in the world so as I would learn these smaller truths along the way I kept waiting to feel the the revelatory feeling that I had when I got the big truth interesting yeah did you have any resentment or anger once they opened up after four decades of hiding this lie? I did. I did. It was like a rollercoaster. I feel like I've had every possible feeling that you could have about this news that I got. Any possible feeling you could have, I've had. I've had gratitude. I've felt elated. I have felt bliss. I have felt anger. I felt anxiety.

4:21I felt fear. So it was, I mean, I think when they first told me, I felt really compassionate because I could see when they told me how afraid they were to tell me. And I remember saying to my dad, and I don't know where this came from, but I'm so grateful that this dropped into my brain to say to him, I said to him, you know, our whole lives, I have told you that I love you on the pretense of a lie. Like every time that I have said, I love you, there's been a tiny filter that my dad was thinking like, oh, she loves me because she thinks I am her father. And so in this revelation, I actually got to say, I love you unconditionally.

5:02Like I got to say, I know the full truth of you and I'm not going anywhere. I still love you. And to me, that's a much more powerful love, right? A love that's rooted in absolute vulnerability and honesty. When you get to like show all your dirty laundry to somebody and your greatest fears and admit the things that you're scared to admit and they don't go anywhere, that is real love, right? So that's what we got to give each other. When they gave me the truth, I got to give them that return of unconditional love. And them giving me the truth was a way of loving me unconditionally because they were saying, we know you might be mad.

5:38We know you may not want to be in relationship with us. We know this might change the dynamic of our family forever, but we're going to give you this truth anyway.

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6:43Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.