Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand In the Sun and Be Your Own Person

by Shonda Rhimes

“Happy Mother’s Day to the mom who taught me to be strong, to be powerful, to be independent, to be competitive, to be fiercely myself and fight for what I want.”

“Happy Birthday to a mother who taught me to argue when necessary, to raise my voice for my beliefs, to not back down when I know I am right.”

Say it. Just say thank you. Then smile. And don’t say anything else. Don’t offer any words of apology or remorse for having the audacity to wear a dress someone could like. Just stand there, confident and bold. Like you, too, think this color is great on you. “Thank you,” I reply.

And what happens is, when I give myself permission to just hear the compliments and not apologize for the compliments or brush them off or negate the compliments? I start to appreciate the compliments.

More important? The fact that someone paused to take the time to give me a compliment means something to me.

So when you negate someone’s compliment, you are telling them they are wrong. You’re telling them they wasted their time. You are questioning their taste and judgment.

Wonder Woman is a study in badassery. It’s a word. Badassery. I know it is a word because I just typed it twice, and when my computer asked if I wanted to ignore it or add it to my dictionary? I chose add it to my dictionary.

I still couldn’t own being powerful. I tried hard to make myself smaller. As small as possible. Tried not to take up space or make too much noise.

I just wanted everyone else to feel comfortable. Funny thing is, no one ever asked me to do it.

I’m trying to take up as much space as I need to take up. To not make myself smaller in order to make someone else feel better.

Then I put on my blue Frozen superhero cape and I do some spinning. Well, I do the adult version of that. Which means that I open a great bottle of wine and pour myself a glass.

My first moment of asserting myself as the leader, the captain of what we all thought was going to be a tiny sailboat called Untitled Shonda Rhimes Pilot but turned out to be a gigantic ocean liner called Grey’s Anatomy.

My first NO. And my favorite NO.

“No is a complete sentence,”

“I am going to be unable to do that.” • Zola gives me: “That is not going to work for me.” • And there’s simply: “No.”

Now it’s happening. And all I can think is, “Good. Now I know.” The worst thing that could happen is happening and . . . so what? It isn’t so awful.

“What did you mean by that?” I ask in a calm voice.

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.

The need to hear the words: You are not alone.

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.

She was never silenced. Never small. Never too insecure to make good on her natural gifts.

She is the goal. She is freedom.

They do not make me braver, faster, stronger. They tell me I already am braver, faster, stronger.

They do not chase my demons and chop off their heads for me. They tell me I am capable of slaying my own demons.

“Don’t let what he wants eclipse what you need. He is very dreamy,” she says. “But he is not the sun. You are.”

They are MFEO: Made For Each Other.

People really do not like it when you decide to step off the road and climb the mountain instead. It seems to make even the people who mean well nervous.

“We just want you to be happy,” confused friends would say to me anxiously whenever I seemed completely content to be single.

One foot in front of the other. One foot in front of the other. One foot in front of the other. I’m not going to make it.

People keep telling me that I am glowing. Because I am in love, they say! Because I am fat and sweaty, I say!

Side note: the praise I received for having a guy everyone hoped I would marry eclipsed any and all praise or congratulations or excitement that accompanied the births of my children and any of my many career accomplishments. It was stunning.

Like my street value went up because a guy wanted me.

You know what’s a bigger taboo than being fat? Not wanting to get married. Remind me to start a revolution about that later.

Someone loves you so much that they want to be with you, Shonda! What is your problem? I just don’t get you!

Let’s be free, let’s not be bound by rules. I want to say all of this. I don’t say all of this.

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 and setting it on fire.

“Why are you so cheerful?” she asks. “We broke up because I don’t ever want to get married!”

has their own version. We all spend our lives kicking the crap out of ourselves for not being this way or that way, not having this thing or that thing, not being like this person or that person. For not living up to some standard we think applies across the board to all of us. We all spend our lives trying to follow the same path, live by the same rules. I think we believe that happiness lies in following the same list of rules.

That? Is wrong. There is no list of rules. There is one rule. The rule is: there are no rules.

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...

Normalize your lives, people.

Don’t apologize. Don’t explain. Don’t ever feel less than.

One foot in front of the other. You will make 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.”

“You were joyless. All you ever did was sleep. Literally. And metaphorically. You were asleep. I was worried. Life is short. Yours seemed really, really short. And now you have completely transformed. You’re alive. You’re living. Some people never do that.”

The cruelty with which I treated myself is no longer tolerated.

am too busy dancing it out to be self-conscious.

I can’t wait to find out who I will be when next Thanksgiving rolls around. Whoever I’ll be, I will be beautiful.

I will be happy. I will be worth it.