THE TRUTH ABOUT MY LIFE

LEARNING A PAINFUL FAMILY SECRET LED THE STAR TO LOOK INWARD - AND SHARE HER EMOTIONAL JOURNEY 

- JANINE RUBENSTEIN

“There’s this phrase, ‘You’re only as sick as your secrets,’” says Kerry Washington. The saying has been at the top of her mind lately. “I think there is some truth to that,” she continues. “There’s so much healing and liberation in the truth and not feeling like we have to hide.”

The Emmy-winning TV star and mother of three, 46, says that in a way, she’s been hiding in plain sight—and suffering in silence—much of her life. But after a series of unexpected events, she finally feels free. Five years ago Washington’s parents sent her a text message inviting her to an urgent sit-down where they disclosed for the first time that she’d been conceived using a sperm donor. The news “turned my world upside down,” she says.

But it also kicked off a journey of self-discovery that led her to reevaluate her past traumas. From that came a desire for radical transparency. Thicker Than Water, the notoriously private star’s evocative new memoir, is the result of it all. “It’s me working to understand my life up until now,” she says, “given this new information that’s felt like sort of the missing puzzle piece.”

From the outside, things have always seemed perfectly in place for Washington, who graduated Phi Beta Kappa from George Washington University in 1998. She landed her breakout role in 2001’s Save the Last Dance and worked steadily in film. Then, in 2012, she and Shonda Rhimes teamed up to make TV magic with