Actress Meagan Good, 39, has advice for people who are struggling: Don’t give up.
Good, who is best known for films such as Stomp The Yard, Anchorman 2 and Think Like a Man, just starred in a Lifetime movie called Death Saved My Life and directed a music video on racial justice for artist Diarra. The actress also had a brush with cancer, and had to have cancerous cells removed from her uterus a decade ago.
Read MoreGood’s Pandemic Experience
Like all of us, Good has been living through a global pandemic and coping with the myriad life changes that have resulted from it. “I’m a very glass half-full type person,” says Good. “For me it’s a waste of time to linger in a space of unhappiness and depression. And sometimes it’s true that you can’t help it. You know, I have been depressed where it’s just like, God, I don’t know what to do to get off this rollercoaster.”
“I’m a very glass, half-full type of person,” says Good.
Good relates to the feeling of not wanting to get out of bed in the morning.
“I’ve only felt like at a few times in life and it’s just the worst feeling and it’s terrifying,” she says. “But what I’ve done is I get up, even when I feel like I can’t, you know, and I push forward, even when I don’t want to.”
“How am I supposed to be growing?”
She says she has used the pandemic as an opportunity to look inward.
“The wonderful thing, and the sad thing about the pandemic is that I had to really intentional about that. I was like, I can’t get depressed. I don’t want to be unhappy that way. I want to set my mind to say, okay, God has allowed this time. What am I supposed to be getting out of it? How am I supposed to be growing?” she says.
Good Focuses on Growth
Good keeps her focus strong, and encourages others to do the same through her example. She asks herself, “What is the trauma or the stuff that I need to be dealing with? How do I need to be healing? Do I need to see my therapist?”
She also turns to religion. “I got very intentional about making sure I read my Bible every day, praying every day, meditating every day, speaking affirmations over myself, listening to uplifting music.”
Related: 'Faith, Family, and Friends' Helped Beverly Reeves Get Through Ovarian Cancer Treatment
Take a Good Look at Yourself
Good is using this time to improve; it’s clear she’s not wasting the pandemic one bit.
“How do I make this time of preparation time for what’s coming in the next season? How do I just become better, heal and grow and get perspective and research and learn and prepare? And so that’s what I did the whole pandemic.”
Good says that she and her husband, producer DeVon Franklin, got marriage counseling to strengthen their bond. “It wasn’t because there was an issue or because anything bad was happening,” Good says. She married Franklin in 2012.
“It was like, we have this time. Let’s just look underneath the hood and let’s be proactive instead of reactive,” she says. “And it was like a unique time to just like really present to our marriage and become better at being married and fall deeper in love with each other and be more supportive and find out what were some of the things that we were dealing with.”
Next up for Good? An untitled show for Amazon produced by Amy Poehler. And shooting on Shazam! 2 starts soon.
“I’m just feeling real thankful, real, real, real, really, really appreciative,” she says.
Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process.
