When she looked at me, it was never through me, but into me, lifting me off the ground in an invisible embrace

It was a kind of no-mans-land. A world filled with women who would straighten up if a man walked in, who would set aside the triviality of their own work and quickly move everything out of the way. But the mean, whoever they were, never stayed long, and when the door slammed behind them, the house seemed to breathe a sigh of relief

It has taken me a long time to see that it was my grandmothers sturdy presence in my life—never full of tender touches or hugs and kisses, just a quite, fierce devotion—that created a rock inside me, a safe spot I’ve always relied on but never knew I had

“Don’t be ugly”

This man, the “scallywag” who took what he wanted without any consequences and left my great-grandmothers life irrevocably changed, had forever remained a dashing figure, a hero in his daughters eyes. Yet it was that woman, Joys mother, who had struggled her entire life to be beside her child. Who is the dashing figure in this scenario

And though, as a child, I never picked up on any of that, never perceived my grandmothers complex feelings toward her mother, I can see in my memory how Mimmie was always hovering around the edges of her daughters lives, not completely ignored but never invited into their center. As I put it all together, I wonder if mimmie spent her life seeking their forgiveness for the things they never talked about. And Minnie must have felt no small amount of fury toward her own mother as well, the mother who abandoned her, who shut the door in her pregnant daughters face. All of them with wounds that wouldn’t heal because no one acknowledged they were bleeding, and yet each of them needing the other to be near. And that—I realize—is how this story fits into my life. These generations of women, weaving a pattern into a lifelong garnet, unconsciously handed down from mother to daughter to granddaughter to me

I never knew anything about my father, never asked him a single question about who he was, or what he was feeling, never relaxed around him long enough to be curious. Even at four, maybe before, I felt guarded, afraid to allow him into my heart for fear that his need to be comforted or to feel important or successful or even loved would suffocate me

“Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent” - Carl Jung

The crushing weight of guilt made my freedom hardly worth it

But during all the many months we were living at Joys house, my mother was moving from one job to the next, so even when she was with my brother and me, I’m sure that part of her was somewhere else, thinking about other things

But whether she was preoccupied or not, I always felt thrilled to be in the same room with her, intoxicated by her childlike glee, which was just the same as mine

“Our little place.” I can’t remember why that one day, that obscure spot, stayed in our minds, and my brother can figure it out either. But if I let my subconscious mind walk back there, I hear my mother laughing while we lie flat on our backs, looking up at the sky. She’s describing a magical, anything’s possible world, seeing things in the masses of condensed water vapor that I couldn’t imagine. A world where everything has a hidden treasure in it, including Ricky and me

I want to do “good,” to please him, but in equal amounts I also want him to stop. I can’t speak for fear of revealing what a sniveling coward I really am, unworthy of his attention, or anyone’s. I’m in a pickle but at least I’m not being ignored. The same choices in this emotional relish dish: to be safe and ignored or to be terrified and seen. So I stay. I look down at my feet and see his sculpted arm holding me securely where I don’t want to be

I started making drawings and little art projects at home, gifts I’d then give to her, my secret friend. I never told anyone about her, especially not Baa. I felt that I was doing something wrong, that there were things about me I should hide. Maybe I worried that it would hurt her feelings knowing that my best friend, my only friend, was a woman her age. I don’t know

Never in my life had I experienced a feeling like that, the freedom of sailing along under the canopy of eucalyptus trees while keeping the safety of my brother and his red bike from getting too far ahead. I felt so much love for my stepfather, the man who had cared enough to give me the gift of gliding, untethered

Princess in her shorty PJs and I in my ankle length nightgown would be quietly playing in our room, frolicking in the delicious “let the day present itself” feeling of childhood

Nowhere in sight was the loving patience he had shown during our bicycle training days. Now he sounded mocking and condescending, as if my inability was purposely done to challenge him

It was no secret that Jocko thought my mother was loving but limited and while she could kiss our boo-boos, it was his job to bring us fully alive, to unleash in us all the important primary colors of being human; colors my mother felt uncomfortable or incable of revealing and he did not. We were her children, for goodness sake, so perhaps she felt it was inappropriate to behave in an openly sensual way in our presence. That’s true, I’m sure, but it was more than that. Joy has raised her, and my grandmothers troubled childhood, complete with daily lectures on the sin of sex, clung to Baa. It was like a cloud that floated through my mother’s life, dimming her brightness, sometimes making it difficult to see her clearly

She didn’t ask me why I had done such a thing, or demand to know what on earth I was thinking—which were two questions I couldn’t have answered anyways. She never yelled or even raised her voice in anger. Not ever. She expressed hurt. And that was much worse. Somewhere in me I had the feeling that I needed to protect her from hurt and as I got older, that meant protecting her from me. There were times when I longed to have her explode in a fury, Times when I knew she was silently disturbed by my stepfathers rough treatment of Ricky—ridiculing him for no other reason than to make him cry—times when I wanted her to rescue me, and on the rare occasions when she did try to dry our tears or soothe our fears, Jocko would call her a worry wart, discrediting her, claiming she would surely ruin us as she had been ruined herself

Yet, outside of Jockos sphere, if I was troubled about something or needed to talk, or work something out, she was endlessly patient and supportive

Whenever I felt I’d hit a hopeless dead end, she had a way of making me think of alternate routes by suggesting a long list of choices I hadn’t seen. And even though most of them were maddeningly unacceptable, her ability to look for that little bit of sunshine in a situation that seemed pitch black always gave me the sense that if everything went out, I had a backup generator: my mother

I’m sure this first real slam in his career was devastating, but I never saw Jocko take the punch like the brilliant stuntman he’d always been, never saw him register the blow or pause to reassess who he was, as an actor or a human. Righteously fuming, he would blame it on everyone else’s spiteful incompetence, saying that it was the network who had lost, not him. But when the ride seems to be headed nowhere but down, how can you change your course if you won’t recognize where you’re headed? How can you change who you are and learn what it takes to get up, over and over, if you can’t allow yourself to feel how much it hurts to be knocked down?

“Learn to labor and to wait”

But now I was eighteen, in New York City, the star of a new television series, and about to walk onto the enormous stage at radio city music hall. Awe was something I couldn’t allow myself to feel, not in the slightest. My carefully learned survival system was securely in place so I wasn’t fragile or unsure m, wasn’t quaking in my boots—which would have been completely understandable. I saw what I needed to see, did what I needed to do, and blocked from my brain anything that felt overwhelming, which unfortunately included Barbara stanwyck

From the first moment we met, Don put his protective arm around me, while at the same time always treating me with respect as if I were a weathered professional, which he was and I wasn’t. He never seemed upset that I, a rank newcomer, had most of the page count in every episode, and if he had a problem with the lack of interesting story lines for his character, I never felt his dissatisfaction. He just quickly watched out for me

I never thanked him, not really. I wish I had

I mean, really, what the hell were they thinking? Were they just testing to see if I was serious about this whole acting thing? Then again, was this acting or a study in humiliation? Or is acting always walking on the edge, always flirting with the possibility of falling flat on your face, or of wiping out and losing the top of your bathing suit?

Maybe the fact that I had lived in a fogbank so long was keeping me from projecting ahead, forcing me to live one day at a time with very few expectations. I don’t know. But when I walked away from the girl I loved so much, I didn’t feel crushed. Fidget was still with me, was me. And living with her so relentlessly that year had given me things I hadn’t owned before: a tiny sliver of confidence, her willingness to be optimistic, and her daring ability to look toward the future

“When lift plus thrust is greater than load plus drag, anything can fly”

I didn’t know how to frolic

How do two people grow up together, build strength in their own legs, when they’re always leaning on each other?

It was all of those mindless, repetitive tasks I was forced to endure day after day, the getting up and doing every scene the best I could, over and over, that gave me a kind of “miles in the saddle.” They strengthened muscles not located in my body but in my heart—muscles not easy to access and certainly not fun. But easy in overrated and fun is extremely relative

For the first time in my life I wanted food over all else. I would work and then fill the rest of the day cooking and eating, trying to drown my loneliness in a vat of spaghetti with gobs of meat sauce and a whole chocolate cake, unable to stop eating even when I was in physical pain. And always I was alone, hiding in a closet of food

The most difficult task of all was simply getting through the day, every day

I felt oddly triumphant. Without feeling blazing rage or fear or sadness, I had asked for what I wanted. Getting it seemed secondary

Get to know the camera, make friends with it

If I was irritated or impatient or bored or just fed up with the work, the camera could and would see it, implying that those colors were unappealing and would paint me as unlikeable

With an open joyous laugh on her face and a spark in her eyes like a challenge to anyone who thinks they can stop her. She’s alive and going to take a big bite out of it

I stopped looking for it. I just accepted it wasn’t there and moved on

She aches to be loved. We all do

His existence in my life enabled me to shut the door on the outside world, to be home without feeling lonely. As I took care of him—my all consuming responsibility—I felt as though I were in command, becoming more capable, confident part of myself, putting sadness in the back seat and consciously steering away from feeling helpless or powerless, as though I had a choice of what road to travel. With both hands on the wheel, I headed directly toward what I wanted, and what I wanted was as clear as a full moon peeking over the dark horizon: to be an actor, to have the chance to explore where that took me, what places it would push me, lead me, teach me. If I was not given that opportunity, it had to be because I wasn’t ready, that the power to change everything rested in me. Like my stepfather, the industry had decided that it knew who I was, threatening me with failure and the ability to cut off the lifeline I had to myself: acting. But if I could rake care if Peter, I could take care of me. If I failed to get s role, let it be because I wasn’t skilled enough or talented enough or because another actresses interpretation was better; I could fix that

I never wanted to get to the point where showing my face on camera at just the right angle was more important than the work itself

“Get into therapy. If you’re blocked as a person, you’ll be blocked as an actor. You have to know how to use yourself. You are your own instrument of expression and you have to keep it finely tuned”

Musicians know every inch of their equipment, were constantly practicing exercises to keep themselves and their instruments aligned. Actors should connect with themselves in the same way, they need to know their physicality and habitual behavior, their history and emotional landscape, to own the information that would allow them to interpret a character through their individual uniqueness

“The pianist plays all the same notes, yet it’s the way he plays... that something only he can add... his particular awareness of what he’s doing”

“Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn”

But you have to know what you have lived

Relaxation. A mouth held tight or shoulders tended, even hands that are unconsciously clenched, can block impulses

“You keep saying you want to be better, that you come here day after day because you want to know how to be a better actor. But Sally, listen. Where you want to be is where you are right now. And it had cost you a lot. You have friend to hold it all in. You must always be where you are right now”

Do the best you can. But don’t throw it away, Sally. We all see what’s happening. Trust us and yourself

A character—any character—can be played effectively more than one way

I’d never visualized the film becoming a product to be put in the marketplace. It was all so secondary to the experience of doing the work

“How do you get a boy to like you?” “You listen to everything he says and laugh at all his jokes”

How you care for your child from the time they are born until they’re eighteen is important, but who you are as a person and parent for as long as you live also counts, and counts one hell of a lot

I didn’t need her to be perfect. I needed to know her, warts and all, so that then, perhaps, I could know myself