Talking as Fast as I Can: From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls (and Everything in Between)

by Lauren Graham

I’m sorry to tell you that, in my experience, there’s no secret to accomplishing almost any goal worth pursuing.

And what is the goal exactly? To make it to the Smucker’s salute on the Today show?

Can you imagine being all that worried today about something coming toward you at the speed of the post office?

“Please tell her I didn’t meet my husband until late in life—there’s still time,” she said. Strangers were worried about me; that’s how long I was single!

Ultimately, everyone who gets close to you is going to see inside your closet on its worst day, and their reaction to that is what will tell you if you’re going to make it or not. You can’t live an entire life secured in by Spanx.

Every food available at REI has the word “fiber” on the package, and everything else they sell has a tough or scary name: the Enforcers, the Prowlers, the Trailblazers, the Strykers. No, these aren’t names of military attack plans—they’re just waterproof socks!

it occurred to me that going into vulnerable public situations unprepared was a little like facing winter in New York City or being on the ski slopes with my twelve-dollar Screaming Mimi’s coat flapping open. I wish I’d learned sooner, but in more ways than one, I now know more about protective layers than I used to. I’ve learned that a little readiness goes a long way when facing the elements, be they rain, or snow, or Access Hollywood. Just like in the outdoors, I’ve learned it’s much easier to strip off a layer if you find you don’t need it than to put one on. If you’ve already exposed yourself, it may be too late.

Because here’s the thing: I was fine on my own, and so are you. But it can be hard when you feel ready for Happy Couplehood and you seem to have missed the train. As my friend Oliver Platt used to say to me about hopes and dreams I’d share with him: “It’s coming, just not on your time frame.”

I find this a helpful reminder in any number of ways: not only when you’re hoping to meet someone, but also when you’re waiting for a better job or for some relief during a bleak time.

But life doesn’t often spell things out for you or give you what you want exactly when you want it, otherwise it wouldn’t be called life, it would be called vending machine. It’s hard to say exactly when it will happen, and it’s true that whatever you’re after may not drop down the moment you spend all your quarters, but someday soon a train is coming. In fact, it may already be on the way. You just don’t know it yet.

There’s more comedy in failure than in success, and it’s a much more universal language. At the party, the worst jobs also seemed to be the ones everyone felt most proud to have endured. It’s an accomplishment to do something well, but maybe even a bigger one to do something well when you’d really rather not be doing it at all.

Great. I was such a bad judge that now I might have to sit in front of a real one?

An important tool against self-doubt is just to ignore it. Forge ahead anyway. Just keep going, keep going, keep going.

I guess what I’m saying is, let’s keep lifting each other up. It’s not lost on me that two of the biggest opportunities I’ve had to break into the next level were given to me by successful women in positions of power. If I’m ever in that position and you ask me, “Who?” I’ll do my best to say, “You” too. But in order to get there, you may have to break down the walls of whatever it is that’s holding you back first. Ignore the doubt—it’s not your friend—and just keep going, keep going, keep going.

But not only did it not storm, the weather played its part during the seasonal episodes as though it too had been cast in the show. When we were filming “Summer” it was balmy, “Fall” had a bit of crisp in the air, in “Spring” breezes lifted us up, and during “Winter” we had an unseasonable chill. For usually predictable Southern California, this was nothing short of magical. And the predicted El Niño storms? They didn’t happen.