When Kerry Washington was in college at George Washington University in the ’90s, the future star had a high GPA and dangerously low self-esteem.
In the Emmy-nominated actress’s new memoir Thicker Than Water — out Sept. 26 from Little, Brown Spark — she reveals the many ups and downs of her life, including experiencing trauma and anxiety as a young child and growing up with parents she felt were constantly at odds and keeping things from her.
The biggest secret they kept, which she only recently learned as an adult, was that her mother Valerie and father Earl used a sperm donor to conceive Washington after struggling with fertility issues. Looking back now, “I think that dissonance of like, ‘somebody’s not telling me something about my body’ made me feel like there was something in my body I have to fix,” Washington, 46, tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue, out Friday.
Kerry Washington.
Josefina Santos
Washington writes that to cope with those feelings, she sought out to be perfect, but in doing so, she reached her lowest point during her college years. “Because of abuse, of perfectionism, because of all kinds of things,” she says. “My behaviors stemmed from me not being comfortable in my body.”
Here, in an exclusive excerpt from her new memoir, the star writes in gripping detail about those troubling behaviors and eating habits, and how they brought her to the brink of despair.
By the time I got to college, my relationship with food and my body had become a toxic cycle of self-abuse that utilized the tools of starvation, binge eating, body obsession, and compulsive exercise. I would, when seeking to stuff my feelings, stuff my face, secretly binge eating for days at a time, often to the point of physical pain, sometimes to the point of passing out.
Kerry Washington in 1999.
Courtesy Kerry Washington
Then, awake the next morning surrounded by dirty dishes, empty food boxes, and sticky leftovers, I would resolve to rid my body of the comfort I had sought the night before. But not by throwing up; that was too messy—that behavior was for girls with eating disorders, girls who were weak and undisciplined. Instead, my drive toward perfectionism directed me toward control, either by not eating for days at a time, or by exercising for several hours, all in an attempt to right the wrongs of the bingeing.
Though they eventually led to unfathomable levels of depression, food and exercise were at first ideal ways to indulge compulsive behaviors because I could hide them more easily than drugs or alcohol. And that constant manipulation of my own behavior allowed me the illusion of control.
But this excessive swinging between extremes was accompanied by a consistent hatred of my body. If my childhood had been spent in the constant pursuit of being better, the seeds of perfectionism had blossomed into self-contempt.
‘Thicker Than Water’ by Kerry Washington.
For much more on Kerry Washington’s life and times, pick up this week’s issue of PEOPLE, out Friday.
Adapted from THICKER THAN WATER by Kerry Washington. Copyright © 2023 by Kerry Washington.
Used with permission of Little, Brown Spark, an imprint of Little, Brown and Company. New York, NY. All rights reserved.
If you or someone you know is struggling with an eating disorder, please go to NationalEatingDisorders.org.
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988, text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741741 or go to 988lifeline.org.
