Actress, producer and activist Kerry Washington, who stars in the Hulu series “Unprisoned,” says she sees “proof of God” in her three children, husband and marriage. Washington, who is married to Nnamdi Asomugha, a former football player, commented during a discussion about voting rights with Al Sharpton at the National Action Network Convention.

Sharpton, who founded NAN in 1991, asked Washington, best known for playing Olivia Pope in the “Scandal” series, how motherhood and marriage changed her and how she managed those roles while maintaining her career. Washington credited the love of God and her husband.

She said, “Well, you’ve met my husband; my husband’s amazing. I got a good one. We have three beautiful children. And I think, you know, when I look at my marriage, and I look at my kids, fundamentally, they are proof of God to me,” she continued. “Because I know that God loves me to have put those people in my life. And that sense of, like, knowing that God loves me. That, to me, is so much of how I make the decisions about the activism that I do and the content that I make.”

Washington, who also told Sharpton that she tried to pick roles that aren’t degrading to the black community or women, said, “Every one of us deserves to know how loved we are. And that we are the hero of our own journey, [and] that we each deserve to be at the center of the story of our lives.”

She continued, “To me, that’s why we have to have movies that have black women as the lead and black men as the lead and TV shows that bring humanity to formerly incarcerated folks. But it’s also why we have to remind people that they matter when it comes to voting. Because you can be the hero of the journey of your community; you can be the change-maker in the world around you.”

Washington, who is also releasing her memoir titled Thicker Than Water this September, explained that when she first started advocating for people to vote, she really wanted to do it right but had to learn through missteps along her journey.

“That’s why I’ve been spending the last couple of years really trying not to be the Kerry Washington who drops in and says vote for this person because I did a lot of that in the beginning. And I would be in communities, and you would get the sense that people would say like, ‘Well, I don’t know if you really care about us. You come here every four years for so and so candidate.’ And I started to think, ‘Oh, I have to be pouring my energy into communities rather than into candidates,’” she said.

While she still has political candidates that she supports, Washington clarified, “Most of our focus now is supporting grassroots communities all over this country of people who are doing the work so that people know that they matter, that one candidate is not the solution. “

Washington further argued that politicians who seek to disenfranchise voters are afraid of the power of the people. The ’Scandal’ actress further contended to convention members from all over the country that exercising their right to vote is an act of self-love.