“Call it what you will. I call it God.” — Cindy Williams
When I told friends and family that I was interviewing Cindy Williams, the reaction was always the same: “What? You are interviewing Shirley?!?!”
That’s because while Cindy Williams’ acting career has spanned over 40 years, with roles ranging from the 1973 movie American Graffiti to her recent cameo in the 2013 children’s television series Sam and Cat, it was Williams’ role as Shirley Feeney in the hit ‘70s and ‘80s TV show Laverne and Shirley that made her a cultural icon and special to my generation.
And so it was with great anticipation that I interviewed her about her new book, Shirley, I Jest!, in which Williams shares her life story. But as I spoke with Williams, I realized that while most people knew of her comedic side, I learned about another side of Williams less familiar to many: A devoutly religious person with an unshakeable faith in God.
And it is here that we can learn an important lesson: A strong spirituality can help us cope with even the most difficult of circumstances.
For Williams, her belief in God was present from the moment she was born. “Well, I was just born with it. He was always present. So if it was imbued in my spirit; I mean, it gets really heady,” she said. “I don’t know how I can talk about this, but God was imbued in me from the time of my birth; And me in him. And I just had this sense of always being all right, even though the situation might be dire. Where that came from, I don’t know, but it just enhanced my knowledge of a power that was unconditionally good, and there for me. And so it was in that spirit that I grew up.”
For Williams, the concept of God is universal, and can mean different things to different people. “I mean, I would say a loving God, but because I would want to include everybody, I’d say a ‘loving presence,’ an unconditionally loving presence that I knew was there, even when horrible things would befall me,” she said. “I still felt that presence, that spirit of unconditional love. I always like to think of him as a person, as my father in heaven or as my God, but he doesn’t care. That power, that spirit doesn’t care because it’s unconditional. So whatever you want to call it.”
Moreover, Williams understands God as present not only in religious experiences, such as prayer and going to church, but also in everyday positive experiences. “And it could be in the form of something fun that would happen with it. I write about this in the book,” she explained. “One night, my dad took me way out into East Texas to my Aunt Renny’s. And she was just this Bible-thumping, crazy woman. And she sat me in a highchair — this is how young I was — and she said she would give me a cinnamon roll if she could preach the Bible to me, and if I would listen to her. Well, I was happy to listen to her, and I was happy for the cinnamon roll.”
“But at the same time as dank as my surroundings were, I was well aware as a child what a character she was. And how much I enjoyed that cinnamon roll. So running parallel with everything that was going on in a bad sense, there was God in that cinnamon roll, and God in my watching my crazy Aunt Renny teaching me the Bible. So I just had that awareness. So call it what you will; I found that happiness in that situation, the God in that situation as a small child, and I felt alright.”
For Williams, as she believes that God is in all things, her beliefs never translated into hating others, or a lack of a belief in science. “There are also people who believe in God who go too far who say if you don’t believe this way you’re going to hell. I don’t believe like that at all. I believe that God is everything and all of us,” she says.
“And I also believe in the theory of evolution. I also believe in that, that’s a big part of God. It’s very mystical to us, but I’m sure if you talked to God, he’d say, ‘Yeah that’s how I did it.’ Of course, evolution, you can’t deny that there was evolution. I can’t deny that any more than I can deny that God exists for me. God is there for me. And you can meld it into one. Maybe he meant something. What if at the turn of the [20th] century you talked to someone about computers. Wouldn’t that be a myth to them, a mystical fantasy — Something that happens in another world? That would be incomprehensible at the turn of the century. But look at where we are now. So how can you not believe that evolution and God all go hand in hand? On either side of that spectrum.”
And as described in her book, from a young age, Williams needed her spirituality in order to cope with one of the most difficult challenges of her life; namely, having an alcoholic father. “Because of my background of having an alcoholic father in the house around me all the time, there were certainly demons around. But God was ever present,” she explained. “Like my father driving when he was just drunk out of his mind. I was always aware that there could be an accident, but I also knew I was somehow protected.”
Williams’ experience is consistent with recent science suggesting the power of religion and spirituality. Over the past two decades, there has been increasing interest in how spirituality and religion influences health. Initial evidence suggests that religion may improve health. For example, more religious or spiritual people may have better recovery following surgery. Not only do religious and spiritual people live longer, but also they tend to be happier. For example, a recent 10-year longitudinal study of 114 adults found that people who considered religion or spirituality highly important to them had one-fourth the risk for depression as other people.
Williams describes how, perhaps ironically, she learned a great deal about God from her father, who despite being a devout atheist helped facilitate her spirituality by taking her to church. “My father was a stone-cold atheist, and for my mother, that was one of her big laments about him,” she said. “When she’d go off on his drunkenness, and his this and his that, whatever, she’d say, ‘He had no God; He was an atheist.’ And the one thing I write about in the book is that my father, even though he was an alcoholic, a drunk, what have you, he would every Sunday drop me off at church. But wherever it came from in him, he’d always drop me off at church, make sure I went to Sunday school. And it was my father who did that.”
In fact, consistent with her belief that God appears in various forms of positive experience, Williams came to understand her father as a man of God, in his own way. “And when he died, and he died an early death because of smoking and drinking and he had lung cancer, at the end, of course, he called the Baptist minister in. I shouldn’t say, ‘of course.’ But when he was sober, my father was the nicest, most wonderful, wonderful man. But when he drank, he was the devil himself. So when it did come time, and he knew he was going to die, we had the Baptist minister over to the house and sat with my father,” she said. “And I just watched from the other room — I didn’t sit there with them — but it was something. But at the same time, my father loved nature. He had a great regard for nature. He was like an environmentalist; A love for nature; a deep, deep love for nature and all things that that held within it. So in essence, he was a godly man. In essence, he did love God. Because nature, as we all know, is God.”
There are many theories as to why spirituality and religiosity can improve one’s health and well-being. Williams describes how many of these mechanisms are active within her concept of faith. One possible reason is that having strong religious beliefs gives us a sense of understanding, or organizing beliefs in an otherwise chaotic and unpredictable world. For Williams, in addition to her belief that God is present in good things, one of the beliefs that she holds, and that helps her understand some of the difficulties she’s experienced, is that all things are connected — good and bad.
“They were two different things, but they were the same thing — all running together, interwoven. And I had to deal with the presence of my father, my earthly father, my dad and everything that brought about, and a child has nowhere to put that, so you just survive. And so I dealt with that, but there was always this loving presence with me,” she explained.
Williams also describes the importance of gratitude as critical to her faith and spirituality. Studies of gratitude suggest that it is linked to improved mental and physical health. “Gratitude — you can be grateful to God, and you can be grateful to your waitress. Because I’ve been a waitress and seen people not be grateful for their meal or the person who’s serving it,” she says. In her book, Williams describes a less-than-grateful encounter with the late Jim Morrison, then lead singer of the Doors.
“And it’s all the same, and you do it with love. Thank you for bringing me that glass of water. And thank you God for letting me have water today. It’s that consciousness of grateful love. Thank you for being a kind person. Thank you for showing kindness to animals. Thank you for petting my dog. And thank you, God, for letting me have this beautiful dog, for creating dogs,” she said.
“A Grateful heart is a beautiful heart.”
Williams also describes the importance of charity. Research demonstrates that charitable giving, and giving of one’s time through volunteering, can improve health and well-being. “And charity is anyone who crosses my path. And that’s what I try to teach my children — anyone who crosses your path and asks you for your charity. You give it to them; they’re yours,” she explained.
Further, evidence suggests that mindfulness meditation, which may be similar to certain forms of prayer, has been shown to result in lower levels of anxiety and depression. For Williams, prayer is not passive — it must be active to work for her. “Christ said, ‘Knock, and the door will open. Ask, and ye shall receive.’ And he meant it. You ask, you don’t just sit there and not ask a question. You ask. God resounds in the universe,” she said. “And the Beatles said it. ‘And in the end, the love you make is equal to the love you take. It goes out into the universe, into the mind of God. And then it comes back to you, whatever it is. And that’s why when you ask for something for yourself, you must do it boldly. Because the way that Christians today believe, it is your father’s good pleasure for you to have it. And I love that. Who can’t love that?
“But you have to ask. That’s part of the meditation, part of the prayer. The bottom line is, I love God. I have a personal relationship with God, and that’s that. And God is nature, God is everything beautiful in this world to me. And I always turn to that when I’m in trouble. And there’s always an answer. I just sit and listen. He always answers me,” she said.
“Always.”
Finally, Williams says that one of the reasons her spirituality gives her comfort is the social connection she has with others. And this connection is not limited to when she is actually in church or at Mass. “Well, it’s not like I go to church every week or attend Mass every week; I will go. But it’s within me. I mean, right now, I have a candle lit, Sacred Heart, you know I’m sitting here looking at it. It’s on a personal level, and it’s on a universal level,” she explained. “I love to go to Mass and say the rosary, and know that there are all of these other millions of people who are saying it. That that consciousness is altogether, and it’s all embedded in goodness, and we’re praying for the world, and everything is held up in good thought, and ‘Do unto others,’ and I just love to be a part of that wherever I might find it. You know, if it’s not in the Mass, or if it’s not in prayer, it’s singing “The Star Spangled Banner” or the national anthem, or telling a joke on Laverne and Shirley and having the entire audience laugh together. That’s godly. And that’s all-inclusive. That’s when everyone is on the same page at the same time in a happy way.”
“You can go to church right in your own mind and be in church. And worship whatever you want right in your own mind. But some of the ceremony I love. You know, taking Communion in the Methodist church, going to Good Friday in the Catholic Church, going to Christmas mass, and singing in the Methodist Church. Because I call myself a ‘Methodist Catholic’ if I had a religion, or a ‘Catholic Methodist.’”
But not all aspects of Williams’ spirituality have come easy. One of the areas that has been difficult for her has been forgiveness. While forgiveness has been shown to have positive psychological benefits, this has been harder for Williams, particularly as it pertains to her father.
“Forgiveness is a tough one. That’s a tough one to weed out of your consciousness — to really truly forgive. To really, truly let it go and give it up and forgive. And sometimes you have to turn it over to God.” she said. “My friends and I say that, you know. But that, too, is very difficult, because sometimes you want vengeance. Sometimes you want retaliation. And that is very human. And that is a tough one.”
“But it is good to forgive. And even if you practice saying ‘I forgive you. I forgive you.’ Then it comes back into your consciousness, that terrible feeling. It’s anger, and I even hate to say hatred; Because it’s such a terse, toxic feeling. But you have to push it away, and you have to forgive again, and keep forgiving until it’s out of you. It’s very difficult for me. That’s a very difficult one for me.”
“Little things, it’s easy. ’I’m sorry I didn’t mention your name.’ Oh, don’t worry about that. Things like that I don’t worry about. And there have been people that have really done me wrong. And it’s very difficult for me to forgive. But I do practice it. I do continue to practice it.
“I’ll take my father. I forgive the part of him that drank, and we never resolved it because he died too soon — the part of him that was the tormentor. I forgive it, and then I’m over it. It wasn’t until I wrote the book, because I begin with this chapter about my childhood. And it was cathartic for me because there were things I put away in my childhood. There were things I thought of, I cried over, clenched my hands and pounded the gateways of heaven over it. And ‘Why me? Why this?’ But I never, ever looked at it with that kind of a light shown on it.”
Children of alcoholics may face several challenges. Williams describes how keeping secrets and not addressing life experiences may occur. Unfortunately, avoiding or suppressing experience may worsen, rather than improve, well-being.
“Suzanne Somers, who’s a friend of mine, wrote a book called ‘Keeping Secrets’ and that’s what it was like. I mean, if you’re the child of an alcoholic, you keep secrets. She got to talk it out with her father before she wrote the book. And so there was like a natural forgiveness that seemed to occur there. I never got that chance with my father,” Williams said. “And so all the terrible feelings that went along with that died with him. I mean, didn’t die with him. He died, and I never got to have that closure.”
“Therefore, there were things, until I started writing the book, that I never dealt with. I just put away. And I never really sat down with anyone — not really — and talked about this, about my childhood. And so I put it all away. And then it started coming up naturally when I had to write the book, and there were things that were just so bitterly painful. So I would go through these times when I was writing the book when it was Dad, and I just loved him so much.”
“And then there was this other devil I had to deal with. It was so sinister and horrible that I couldn’t forgive it. I couldn’t get past it. It took my breath away. And I didn’t get into any of the real detail. I just hit upon points just to be true to children of alcoholics, and loyal to that. And there was enough in the book that painted the picture,” Williams said.
“But I haven’t fully forgiven him. And I’m still working on that. Before I die, I want that to be out of my consciousness. I want that out and done with and put to bed. Because it’s part of me, it’s a part of what makes me, me. And there are things that I still have knee-jerk reactions to and still have Achilles’ heels, and a lot of anger still. And I can’t seem to forgive that. I can’t forgive certain things that were brought about because of my father’s alcoholism. And so that’s placed upon him and, therefore, I can’t forgive myself. And it’s all on me — I can’t forgive myself. And I still carry things where I go — doubt, lack of confidence. ‘Oh, they’re going to find out about me. They’re going to find out what a terrible person I am.’ But what it really is is, what a terrible person my father was when he drank. I was his little sidekick. So I grapple with that. And that’s very human.”
“There are ways to pray, You can ask for things, but you need to do them almost in a picture form. I can’t find the picture form to ask God to weed that out of my consciousness. And give me full forgiveness of my father,” she said.
For Williams, being religious and spiritual in this world has not always been easy. She describes how she views the cynicism that often pervades the current cultural landscape: “I see it everyday in cynicism. And that is so far away from God, cynicism. But forgiveness is a very difficult thing for human beings to grapple with. It’s so very multilayered. And the thing that causes the need for the forgiveness, the pain that’s attached to that and people grappling with it every day. And you see it on television, on the news.”
“Can anybody forgive anybody of anything? That should be the name of the news. Instead of ‘The News at 10’ it should be ‘Can anybody forgive anybody of anything?’ [Because] nobody can. And the world is so cynical. But you know what? I think it’s going to backlash into people having to reach into themselves. And having faith and charity and hope. Because there will be nowhere else to turn. I mean, where else is there after that?”
Williams describes what can often be a contentious political landscape in which people fight rather than solve problems. She explained: “We are all one. We are all connected. If we all were of one mind, and we are, we’d find the perfect balance in these things.”
And notably, Williams describes how being religious and spiritual is not necessarily “welcomed” in Hollywood. In many ways, she felt that she had to be more guarded about her spirituality.
“My religion or my beliefs in God, I keep them quiet. And I’ve always been perfectly happy doing that. But I’ve always been keenly aware that you just don’t bandy about God in the public square in Hollywood. You just don’t, because there are just too many cynics. And I just don’t want to have to argue. What’s the purpose in arguing God? I mean, there is no purpose in that. It was always something that I kept close to my vest — like a good poker hand,” she says.
“If it came up … It’s not like I would put my Bible under my arm each day and go to the studio. I have friends who are actors whose names you’d recognize immediately who I talk about God with all the time. It’s not like I go out and have a Bible meeting every day. It’s just God is a part of my life, and if it arises, you don’t mention it because you’d make that person uncomfortable, and perhaps yourself. It’s not something that dragged me down or caused me to not do this or that in my career. It’s just that I’m a person who prays and loves God. Period. Pure and simple. That’s it.”
Ultimately and through it all, Williams recognized that even in a town like Hollywood, God was there.
“I know that sounds sentimental. There was this one time I was with these incredible comedy writers. And you’d know them by name if I said them. And we were watching this show. And it was New Year’s Eve, and I forget the singer, and they were all making cynical but funny remarks about them,” she said. “You see it in comedy, you see cynicism really run rampant in comedy. But when it’s funny, it can be very funny.”
“And Penny was with me, [Laverne and Shirley co-star] Penny Marshall. And the two comedy writers were making these remarks about the singer. And they were funny, but they were putting him down. So I just said, and I was scared to say this, ‘Now, let’s pick out all the good things about him, and let’s say it.’ And then it was dead silence from them. And then Penny said, ‘Well, his mother must be proud of him.’
“And that was as much God to me as going to church.”
Photo source: Cindy Williams/Used with Permission
An earlier version of this article originally appeared in Psychology Today on June 25, 2015.
