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My destiny rides squarely on the back of my imagination.
I birth babies, I end lives. I dance it out. I wear the white hat. I operate. I gladiate. I exonerate. I spin yarns and tell tall tales and sit around the campfire. I wrap myself in fiction. Fiction is my job. Fiction is it. Fiction is everything. Fiction is my jam.
With one exception: every single writer I met likened writing for television to one thing—laying track for an oncoming speeding train.
So let’s just put it this way: my mother has six children, seventeen grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. When I see her, I like to tell her that she is “keeping it tight.” Mainly because it appalls her. Also because it makes her laugh. Mostly because we all know it’s true.
A lady never shows her soul outside the boudoir.
The thing is, a good story is not about purposely lying. The best stories are true. Giving good story just requires that I . . . leave out the untidy bits.
I had a wonderful childhood, but I lived so deep in my imagination that I was happier and more at home in that pantry with the canned goods than I ever was with people. I felt safer in the pantry. Freer in that pantry. True when I was three years old. And somehow even more true at forty-three.
You know who gets to be miserable? Malala. Because someone shot her in the face. You know who else? The Chibok schoolgirls. Because the terrorist group Boko Haram kidnapped them from school for forced marriage (which is just like regular marriage except exactly the opposite and full of rape) and no one cares anymore. You know who else? Anne Frank.
And at some point, it dawned on me that the reason I had such a great childhood and never wanted for anything was because my parents worked extremely hard so we could have crazy things like food and gas and clothes and tuition.
Athlete Talk is what happens on all of those interviews that take place right after any pro sports event you see on TV. A boxing match or an NBA game. Serena Williams smashing some record in tennis. Olympic swimming.
Good Athlete Talk is when the athlete goes before the press and keeps a smile on her face, voice bland and pleasant as she deftly fields one reporter’s question after the other—never once saying anything of controversy or substance. My favorite Athlete Talker of all time is Michael Jordan. He’d stand there after scoring 5,635 points in one game, sweat pouring down his head, towering over some tiny reporter: “I’m just happy to be playing the game of basketball,” he’d say, smiling.
Whatever that spark is that makes each one of us alive and unique . . . mine had gone. Stolen like the paintings on the wall. The flickering flame responsible for lighting me up from the inside, making me glow, keeping me warm . . . my candle had been blown out. I was shut down. I was tired. I was afraid. Small. Quiet.
I think synergy sounds like the word one uses to define the calories two people burn off during sex. Think about it. Synergy.
Jimmy did all the work. I didn’t have to do anything. And yet. He made it SEEM like I did stuff. Everyone thought I did all kinds of stuff. So he did all the work and I got all the credit. Like when a baby poops.
Really, it comes down to this: which kind of mother is screwing up her kid more? People love to talk about these Mommy Wars all the time in magazines. Talk show hosts plead: can’t we all come together? But I never really got what everyone was talking about.
The only mommy I am ever at war with is me.
Pithy, witty, snappy. It has highs and lows. Jokes. It’s smart and shiny. And it sounds just fine. Except I’m not actually saying anything. I’m not revealing anything. I’m not sharing anything.
I think a lot of people dream. And while they are busy dreaming, the really happy people, the really successful people, the really interesting, powerful, engaged people? Are busy doing.
Perfect is boring, and dreams are not real.
Who are you? Prince William? No. Get a job. Work. Do until you can do something else.
At film school, I discovered an entirely new way of telling stories. A way that suited me. A way that brought me joy. A way that flipped this switch in my brain and changed the way I saw the world. Years later, I had dinner with Toni Morrison. All she wanted to talk about was Grey’s Anatomy.
Find a cause you love. It’s okay to just pick one. You are going to need to spend a lot of time out in the real world trying to figure out how to stop being a lost loser so one cause is good. But find one. And devote some time every week to it.
Hashtags are very pretty on Twitter. I love them. I will hashtag myself into next week. But a hashtag is not a movement. A hashtag does not make you Dr. King. A hashtag does not change anything. It’s a hashtag. It’s you, sitting on your butt, typing into your computer and then going back to binge-watching your favorite show. For me, it’s Game of Thrones.
My dreams did not come true. But I worked really hard. And I ended up building an empire out of my imagination. So my dreams? Can suck
Who you are today . . . that’s who you are. Be brave. Be amazing. Be worthy. And every single time you get the chance? Stand up in front of people. Let them see you. Speak. Be heard.
You know the character in the old war movies who always gets shot because he panics and runs? That character is me as a mother.
Being a mother isn’t a job. It’s who someone is. It’s who I am. You can quit a job. I can’t quit being a mother. I’m a mother forever. Mothers are never off the clock, mothers are never on vacation. Being a mother redefines us, reinvents us, destroys and rebuilds us. Being a mother brings us face-to-face with ourselves as children, with our mothers as human beings, with our darkest fears of who we really are.
The more I play, the happier I am at work. The happier I am at work, the more relaxed I become. The more relaxed I become, the happier I am at home. And the better I get at the playtime I have with the kids. It’s really just love.
They didn’t understand—my creativity was the one place I never felt stress. Creating worlds, characters, stories has always been where I am most at ease. With the empty whiteboard of an episode before me, I slip into a zone of calm confidence. I feel the hum.
I am what I have come to call an F.O.D.—a First. Only. Different.
Women are the heroes, the villains, the badasses, the big dogs. This, I was told over and over, was trailblazing and brave.
Second chances are for future generations.
It irritated me to my core that we live in an era of ignorance great enough that it was still necessary for me to be a role model, but that didn’t change the fact that I was one.
Losing yourself does not happen all at once. Losing yourself happens one no at a time. No to going out tonight. No to catching up with that old college roommate. No to attending that party. No to going on a vacation. No to making a new friend. Losing yourself happens one pound at a time.
Fifty years ago trying to get out of separate rooms, thirty years ago trying to not serve breakfast or be groped by their bosses, fifteen years ago trying to make clear that they could run a department as well as that guy over there.
I am smart, I am talented, I take advantage of the opportunities that come my way and I work really, really hard.
My father used to tell us, “The only obstacle to your success is your own imagination.” He said it so much that I hear his voice sometimes in my sleep.
“It’s not bragging if you can back it up,” I whisper to myself in the shower every morning. That is my favorite Muhammad Ali quote.
No is a powerful word. To me, it’s the single most powerful word in the English language. Said clearly, strongly and with enough frequency and force, it can alter the course of history.
Because no matter how hard a conversation is, I know that on the other side of that difficult conversation lies peace. Knowledge. An answer is delivered. Character is revealed.
I stuck a Post-it on my bathroom mirror that says, “I can say it or I can eat it.”
I don’t know if anyone has noticed but I only ever write about one thing: being alone. The fear of being alone, the desire to not be alone, the attempts we make to find our person, to keep our person, to convince our person to not leave us alone, the joy of being with our person and thus no longer alone, the devastation of being left alone.
I am NORMALIZING television. You should get to turn on the TV and see your tribe. And your tribe can be any kind of person, anyone you identify with, anyone who feels like you, who feels like home, who feels like truth.
That discovery was: happy, whole people are drawn to happy, whole people, but nothing makes a toxic person more miserable and destructive than a happy, whole person. Unhappy people do not like it when a fellow unhappy person becomes happy.
It’s a hall pass: I don’t have to do anything about my problems if I am busy complaining and feeling sorry for myself.
When you sit down to write every day, it becomes easier and easier to tap into that creative space inside your mind.
This breakthrough only happened to me. I had a breakthrough. Someone else got broken. So while I was busy having epiphanies, a horrible thing was happening to a perfectly wonderful human being. I may have been growing and changing but I was also taking someone’s dream and plan for the future
Happiness comes from living as you need to, as you want to. As your inner voice tells you to. Happiness comes from being who you actually are instead of who you think you are supposed to be.
When you feel the need to apologize or explain who you are, it means the voice in your head is telling you the wrong story. Wipe the slate clean. And rewrite it.
“I am different. I am an original. And like everyone else, I am here to take up space in the universe. I do so with pride.”
