studying at the Juilliard School<\/a>, a season in which she was fulfilling one of her dreams. Still, she felt incredibly disconnected from her other acting dreams as she struggled through the prestigious school\u2019s program.<\/p>\n\u201cMy biggest dream was to be on Broadway, to tell stories through song, and to live in that place where music and emotion meet. And suddenly there I was living in New York City, going to Juilliard,\u201d she explained. \u201cI had never been closer to my dream, and yet I had never been further away from it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe voice that they were trying to shape wasn\u2019t mine. And the path they wanted for me wasn\u2019t the one that I had dreamt of. And that disconnect between who I was and who I was trying to be started to break me down,\u201d she continued. \u201c[But I was] too proud to admit that I was falling apart. I fought my whole life to get there. And now that I was there, I was lost, completely lost.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
That pressure ultimately caused her to slit her wrist one night. During the emotional confession, McDonald recalled calling the Student Affairs director, who she says ultimately saved her life.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI said, \u2018Please help me.\u2019 And she did. She stayed with me. She called for help,\u201d she recounted. \u201cI was disoriented. I was unsure of who I was anymore. It was the darkest time of my life. But it was also the beginning of my healing. And this is important. I want to say this clearly: that time I needed the medication. I needed it to keep me safe for myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe there\u2019s a little bit of beautiful irony or grace [in] the fact that the hospital that saved my life was called Gracie Square [Hospital],\u201d she continued, referencing the psychiatric hospital she spent a month at after the incident. \u201cAt the time, I didn\u2019t understand what grace really meant. I didn\u2019t know how to give any to myself. But now all these years later, I see it differently. Grace was waiting for me long before I knew how to claim it for myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
With a lot of \u201ctime, therapy,\u201d and proper medication, McDonald came out on the other side of that dark season. Ultimately, recalling having to walk past that same hospital regularly during her second pregnancy, the actress \u201clearned that healing is not a straight line\u201d and says the \u201cbravest thing\u201d anyone struggling can do is ask for help.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d look up at the windows and remember that scared 20-year-old girl who thought her story was over. That young woman who thought she had no future \u2014 and here I was, literally carrying the next chapter. Every step past that hospital felt like a love letter to survival, a reminder that coming home to yourself isn\u2019t about going back to who you were: It\u2019s about becoming who you\u2019re meant to be. I\u2019ve learned to keep coming back to grace, to keep loving myself, to keep giving myself permission to fail today and try again tomorrow. And there\u2019s power and strength in that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trigger warning: The article below references suicidal ideation Today, she\u2019s recognized as a trailblazing, award-winning actress, Audra McDonald,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135273,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[84240,163,85,46,231,522,523,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-135272","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-audra-mcdonald","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-lifestyle","13":"tag-mental-health","14":"tag-mentalhealth","15":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}