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

by Shonda Rhimes

I had no real way to account for my unhappiness. For once, the storyteller had nothing to tell. I had no idea why I was unhappy, no specific moment or reason to point to. I just knew it was true.

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.

The dreamers. They stare at the sky and they make plans and they hope and they think and they talk about it endlessly. And they start a lot of sentences with “I want to be . . .” or “I wish . . .”

Shonda, how do you do it all? The answer is this: I don’t. Whenever you see me somewhere succeeding in one area of my life, that almost certainly means that I am failing in another area of my life. If I am killing it on a Scandal script for work, I’m probably missing bath and story time at home. If I am at home sewing my kids’ Halloween costumes, I am probably blowing off a script I was supposed to rewrite. If I’m accepting a prestigious award, I’m missing my baby’s first swim lesson. If I am at my daughter’s debut in her school musical, I am missing Sandra Oh’s last scene ever being filmed at Grey’s Anatomy. If I am succeeding at one, I am inevitably failing at the other. That is the trade-off.

That is the Faustian bargain one makes with the devil that comes with being a powerful working woman who is also a powerful mother. You never feel 100 percent okay, you never get your sea legs, you are always a little nauseous. Something is always lost. Something is always missing.

Lesson NUMBER THREE is that ANYONE WHO TELLS YOU THEY ARE DOING IT ALL PERFECTLY IS A LIAR.

Being a mother isn’t a job. It’s who someone is. It’s who I am.

Being a mother still happens if you don’t stay home with your kids. It still happens if you get a job and go to work. It happens if you are an Army Ranger and you’re deployed overseas and your kid is staying with your parents. Still a mother. Still not a job.

I am already in the middle of a Great Mommy War and it is against my worst enemy—me. I don’t need another war against you. I’m betting you don’t need one either.

What kind of person is more comfortable working than relaxing? Well . . . me. So this Yes required me to change.

I’ve been guilty of working straight through far too many weekends in order to “get ahead.” There’s no such thing. The work is always there in the morning.

change the bottom of my email signature so that it now reads: “Please Note: I will not engage in work emails after 7 pm or on weekends. IF I AM YOUR BOSS, MAY I SUGGEST: PUT DOWN YOUR PHONE.” And then I do what seems impossible: I actually stop answering emails that arrive after seven p.m. I

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.

As Papa Pope told his daughter Olivia: “You have to be twice as good to get half as much . . .” I didn’t want half. I wanted it all. And so I worked four times as hard.

He clichéd at me in a perky, condescending tone. “Nothing tastes as good as thin feels!” Who says that to a fat woman? Seriously? WHO SAYS THAT? Because clearly, a) you have never had barbecue ribs, and b) shut your stupid mouth.

Where is the greeting card that praises the kinds of mothers I know? Or better yet, the kind of mother I was raised by? I need a card that says: “Happy Mother’s Day to the mom who taught me to be strong, to be powerful, to be independent, to be

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.

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

grew up with a front-row seat to what a happy, healthy marriage looks like. Never perfect, constantly evolving, always united.

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.

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.