Michael Ealy Quotes

My acting career helped pull me through the rough times.

Music saved me from a really dark road.

I do a lot of book signings and conventions every year, and I meet a great many readers who are struggling... they're working through illness, injury, addiction, depression, grief, or some other trauma. It seems to me that there's a lot of heroism in fighting those things as well, as best you can.

I managed because of my mother. I managed because I'm strong. I managed the same way every other abuse survivor survives, you just do. So many people have been abused, it's not rare, it's a very common human experience, and we survive. Also, my music plays a big role in my thriving. Having an outlet, it really makes a difference.

Part of the healing process is sharing with other people who care.

I'd gone through the ups and downs and curveballs that life throws at you. I found writing to be very therapeutic and it helped me with a lot of the stuff I was going through.

Being able to sing all these years has helped me handle life's tragedies.

Listen, it's not nice to have your mum kill herself, that is difficult. But at the end of the day, it happened a long time ago. My mother was, I hope, not the reason that I have been successful. It's not as simplistic as 'My mum killed herself; I've got to prove myself.' I was very lucky that my parents took an interest in me.

I was with my grandmother, while one of my brothers lived with my dad, and one lived with my mom. It wasn't a great situation. Acting was the one good thing I was involved in.

When you come from so many damaged places you don't ever want to spiral back there, so you gotta continue to check yourself.

If we had a hard time, my mother would sit me down and we would talk about it, and she kept talking and kept processing until we started to laugh about it.

With my father and sister being very depressed for most of their lives, it was incumbent on me to try to make them laugh, in this ridiculous way. They were the wittiest people I knew, but to get a smile from them was like winning the lottery.

I've written several deeply personal songs this year, which I really love. Some of them came out of intense sadness. This has been an extremely difficult year for me.

In that I found being able to talk to my family about my feelings, praying for strength and realizing that our lives have a deep purpose and the journey of our lives is to find out what that is and express it, was the only way I could have gotten through it.

And having a strong family, you know we've lost some members of our family and had some setbacks, but I think a good family and kids all those things I thought at one time... you got to be kidding me... Those things are so important they enable you to go on.

I know so many people who have gone through just not very good situations, and sometimes you just need a song to help pick you up out of it, especially if you're going through the hurting part.

Music helped me to get out of a rough period in my life when I really struggled to see any future for myself and was terrified about what was happening to the people around me.

I've grown up seeing the pros and cons but I love it and I've always wanted to act. Throughout all the rejections at auditions, and especially when I finally did get something, both my parents have been so supportive and always told me it is all about passion and, if I was doing it because I love it, there's no wrong choice.

When it happened to us and it was all gone overnight, we said, 'We are in this together, we are healthy, our children are healthy and we can work'.

A lot of songs are empowering because everybody who has been through a hard time in a relationship or in their lives can relate to it.

Unlike cricket, where I reached the top solely down to my own efforts, cancer was not a one-man battle. This time, I couldn't have done it on my own. Without the support and bullying encouragement of my wife Rachael, I would not be here now.

'Option B' draws not just on my story but on the research and stories of many people overcoming all kinds of adversity. No one should have to go through challenges and trauma alone.

When a person is going through hell, and she encounters someone who went through hellish hell and survived, then she can say, 'Mine is not so bad as all that. She came through, and so can I.'

When life gave me tough situations, acting helped me cope with those situations.

My wife has now made a point of, after losses, to bring our son into the bed when he wakes up in the morning. So when I'm waking up and I'm still obsessing over whatever happened the night before, I see this little guy right in front of me smiling and wanting to connect with me. It's totally changed how I compartmentalize.