Every work email I write in those ten days before the speech says basically the same thing: Why are you asking me whatever thing you are asking me? Don’t you know I am about to die of humiliation and fear while giving a speech? Let me have this time to say good-bye to my family!
I become nonsensical. Irrational. I stop speaking out loud. I make noises instead.
“Grmmph,” I say to my assistant, Abby, when she asks me if I would like to take a certain meeting.
“Bllummppth,” I mutter to the writers when they ask if I have any story ideas.
The women in my online network send me words of support. They send advice. They remind me to power pose.
“Power pose like Wonder Woman!”
Power posing like Wonder Woman is when you stand up like a badass—legs in a wide stance, chin up, hands on your hips. Like you own the place. Like you have on magical silver bracelets and know how to use them. Like your superhero cape is flapping in the wind behind you.
I’m not just some dork telling you to pretend to be Wonder Woman.
It’s a real thing.
My online network tells me to power pose like Wonder Woman and reminds me of the actual studies that say that power posing like Wonder Woman for five minutes not only improves self-esteem but even hours later improves how others perceive you.
Let me say that again.
Standing around like Wonder Woman in the morning can make people think you are more amazing at lunchtime.
Crazy. But true.
How awesome is that?
(You don’t believe me? Watch the TED Talk.)
I start power posing every time I step into an elevator. It makes for some awkward rides up and down with strangers. But I soldier on. I’ll take whatever help I can get.
More wisdom comes in. One of the women writes with this helpful gem: she wants me to remember that the worst thing that can happen to me is that I’ll crap my pants onstage. As long as that doesn’t happen, she instructs me, I’ll be fine.
Surprisingly, this pants-crapping information somehow makes me feel better. Calmer. Because crapping my pants is not a thing I do. My certainty on this matter makes it possible for me to sleep at night. It also allows me to begin writing bits and pieces of my speech. Which I do on little scraps of paper that I continuously lose. I switch to the Notes app on my phone.
But even as it comes together, I’m not sure the speech is any good. And I don’t really have time to think about it. I’ve just finished producing forty-two episodes of television. It’s the fewest number of episodes that I’ve produced in a long time for any given TV season—but still, I’m bone tired. Private Practice took its bow the season before, so I’ve lost a show. But I’ve added a child. A CHILD. An actual person, a tiny human. Thankfully, Kerry Washington has added one too and I praise the heavens for the gift of only eighteen episodes of Scandal this season. I say it aloud to no one but I’m not sure I could have coped with more. Keeping up with three children, sleeping, working, writing and trying to do it all well has been kicking my ass lately. By that moment in June, I was feeling pretty low about my Mommy Scorecard.
The Mommy Scorecard is a thing I keep in my head. On it is an imaginary series of zeros and tens that get dished out by some imaginary judge-y bitch who looks an awful lot like me. The zeros hit the card when I fail: when I miss a recital because I’m traveling, when I forget that it’s my turn to provide food for preschool snack day, when we don’t make it to a birthday party because the introvert in me just can’t face the magnitude of all the social interaction.
I keep hearing about these Mommy Wars. Debates are raging: which child-rearing style is best, what makes a bad mother, who is to blame for kids with “problems,” how involved should you be at the school—it goes on and on. 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.
It doesn’t help that I now have a tween—a glorious, lanky, stunningly beautiful, future supermodel of a tween—who, like all tweens, possesses a special skill for twisting the knife I’ve already firmly implanted in my own chest.
“This is the third recital you’ve missed,” she’ll remind me. “And . . . are you ever coming to one of my science fairs?”
It’s not the third recital. And I was just at the science fair last quarter. But she makes it sound like I wasn’t. Which makes me feel like I wasn’t.
Boom.
A zero.
Now, I’m no fool. I’m not one of those mothers who allows her children to behave like monsters and walk all over me.
I was raised old-school.
I strive to be old-school.
My kids are not my friends. They are my children. My goal is not to get them to like me. My goal is to raise citizens. My world does not revolve around them. The only helicopter in my life is the toy helicopter that the kids play with.
So my response to my daughter Harper isn’t a wringing of my hands and a tearful apology. Nobody did any hand-wringing and apologizing while raising me and I turned out . . . a writer.
“I work to feed and clothe you. Do you want food and clothes? Then be quiet and show some gratitude.”
That is what I say to my tween.
But inside? Zero on the Mommy Scorecard. Knife twisted a little more. And the commencement speech . . . I have less and less time to focus on it, to obsess about it, to worry over it. It’s the end of the season, it’s the end of the school year.
The day I’m due to fly to Hanover, New Hampshire, I spend the early morning with my youngest daughters. Then I head over to my tween’s school to attend the end-of-the-year ceremony. My daughter is receiving an academic award and, while I already know this, she does not. I don’t want to miss seeing her face when she finds out. I arrive just in time to see her name called and, as her face lights up, I attack her with my camera for photos. There are hugs, smiles, joy. And though I have reminded her every day for weeks, there is the inevitable disappointed face when she hears me say I need to leave. Knife twisting again, I rush off to the airport.
It’s not until I’m on the plane, away from my real life and surrounded by the close friends I’ve brought with me for support, that I really look at the speech I’ve written. That I really face it.
For a while, I feel sick. A cold, hard rock settles at the bottom of my stomach. It’s the same kind of speech I have always written. 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. There is nothing of me in here. I speak from behind a curtain. It’s like a magic trick—I open my mouth but you never actually hear me. You just hear my voice. This speech is all Athlete Talk.
I imagine standing up at that podium tomorrow and looking into the faces of those graduates and . . . What? If I say nothing of substance, tell them nothing, share nothing, give nothing . . . why? Why am I even there?
What am I afraid they will see if I am really myself?
I know it’s not the graduates. It’s the rest of the world. It’s all the other people out there who will hear the speech and judge it and criticize it. And know things about me because of it. I don’t know if I want them to know me. Because . . . because . . . I still don’t truly know me.
What I do know is that I cannot deliver this speech.
I know that I will not deliver this speech.
This speech is not a YES.
I read through it four or five more times. Then I tuck it away into a new folder on my laptop. I label the folder CRAP.
And then I start over.
What I write next is less formal, less stuffy, less stylized.
What I write is casual and a little raw and sometimes inappropriate.
But it’s honest.
> And it sounds like me.
It is me.
If I’m going to give a speech, if I’m going to stand up there and give a speech in front of all these people, if I’m going to make this leap . . .
. . . if I’m going to say yes . . .
If I am going to say YES . . .
I might as well say yes to being me.
No Athlete Talk.
No magic tricks.
I just tell the truth.
When I am done, as the plane streaks through the night sky, I hit Save. And I promise myself that I won’t think about the speech too much more until I am standing at the podium.
The morning of graduation I am up before dawn. I need to jump up and down. Stretch. Breathe. I spend more than a few moments Power Posing. From the window of my suite at the Hanover Inn, I can see the stage. I can see the traditional Old Pine Lectern that serves as the podium from which I am to speak.
I stare at it for a long time in the sunrise.
I am going to say yes to everything that scares me.
I wait for the wave of fear and panic to wash over me. But it doesn’t come. I shrug to myself. It’ll be here any minute, I know. I’m tense, waiting for it. Any second, the familiar freezing panic of stage fright will hit me. The tsunami will hit me.
But it never does.
I am nervous. I am scared. But that is all.
The next few hours are a whirlwind. Photos. Gowns and caps. Shaking lots of hands. Waves of nostalgia. And I keep waiting for the attack of nerves that usually renders me useless. That causes me to become a sweaty pile of hyperventilation. I wait as we march to the stage. I wait as I, along with others, am bestowed with my honorary PhD. I’m still waiting when President Hanlon introduces me and shows me the way to the podium.
I step up to the podium.
And then . . .
Something completely special occurs.
If you watch the video, you can see the moment it happens.
I am standing at the podium. I look out at the crowd. I take a deep breath in. I’m still waiting for it—the fear, the panic, the nerves. I’m almost asking for it. Searching for it. Looking around for it. It must be here somewhere. But when I stare out into that crowd of graduating students in their green caps and gowns, all I see is . . . me.
Twenty years ago, I sat in those chairs, in that crowd, in a green cap and gown. Just like them. I recognize them. I know them. That look on their faces. Their eyes filled with uncertainty. And I understand that the fear, the panic, the nerves I am searching for will not come for me today. It has come for them. The fear they are suffering about what lies ahead is far greater than anything I will ever be feeling. And suddenly I am okay. I am no longer afraid to talk to them. I am no longer afraid to stand there alone at the podium for twenty minutes and be honestly, vulnerably myself with them. Because once upon a time, I was them. And sometime in their futures, they will be me.
Whatever I’m going to say is not for me. It isn’t for the outside world. It doesn’t matter how people react to it or judge it. I’m not talking to anyone but these graduates sitting in front of me. This is just for them.
And so I exhale.
You can see it.
If you watch the video, you can see me exhale.
You can see the very last instant, the very last moment, the very last breath of my fear. From that exhale forth, I am someone new. Someone comfortable. Someone unafraid.
My body relaxes. I smile. I settle into my soul. And for the first time in my life, I stand on a stage and raise my voice to the public with full confidence and not an inch of panic. For the first time in my life, I speak to an audience as myself and I feel joy. Here is what I say:
DARTMOUTH COMMENCEMENT SPEECH
Delivered June 8, 2014
Hanover, New Hampshire
DREAMS ARE FOR LOSERS
President Hanlon, faculty, staff, honored guests, parents, students, families and friends—good morning and congratulations to the Dartmouth graduating class of 2014!
So.
This is weird.
Me giving a speech.
In general, I do not like giving speeches. Giving a speech requires standing in front of large groups of people while they look at you and it also requires talking. I can do the standing part okay. But the “you looking” and the “me talking” . . . I’m NOT a fan. I get this overwhelming feeling of fear.
Terror, really.
Dry mouth, heart beats super fast, everything gets a little bit slow motion.
Like I might pass out. Or die. Or poop my pants or something.
I mean, don’t worry. I’m not going to pass out or die or poop my pants. Mainly because just by telling you it could happen, I have somehow neutralized it as an option. Like as if saying it out loud casts some kind of spell where it cannot possibly happen now.
Vomit. I could vomit.
See? Vomiting is now also off the table.
Neutralized it. We’re good.
Anyway, the point is, I do not like to give speeches. I’m a writer. I’m a TV writer. I like to write stuff for other people to say. I actually contemplated bringing Ellen Pompeo or Kerry Washington here to say my speech for me . . . but my lawyer pointed out that when you drag someone across state lines against their will, the FBI comes looking for you, so . . .
So I don’t like giving speeches. In general. Because of the fear. And the terror. But this speech? This speech, I really did not want to give.
A Dartmouth commencement speech?
Dry mouth. Heart beats so, so fast.
Everything in slow motion.
Pass out, die, poop.
Look, it would be fine if this were, like, twenty years ago. If it was back in the day when I graduated from Dartmouth. Twenty-three years ago, I was sitting right where you are now. And I was listening to Elizabeth Dole speak. And she was great. She was calm, she was confident. It was just . . . different. It felt like she was just talking to a group of people. Like a fireside chat with friends. Just Liddy Dole and nine thousand of her friends. Because it was twenty years ago. And she was JUST talking to a group of people.
Now? Twenty years later? This is no fireside chat. It’s not just you and me. This speech is filmed and streamed and tweeted and uploaded. NPR has, like, a whole app dedicated to commencement speeches.
A WHOLE SITE JUST ABOUT COMMENCEMENT SPEECHES.
There are other sites that rate them. And mock them. And dissect them. It’s weird. And stressful. And kind of vicious for an introvert perfectionist writer who hates speaking in public in the first place.
When President Hanlon called me—
By the way, I would like to thank President Hanlon for asking me way back in January, thus giving me a full six months of panic and terror to enjoy.
When President Hanlon called me, I almost said no. Almost.
Dry mouth. Heart beats so, so fast. Everything in slow motion. Pass out, die, poop.
But I’m here. I am gonna do it. I’m doing it. You know why?
Because I like a challenge. And because this year I made myself a promise to do the stuff that terrifies me. And because, twenty-plus years ago when I was trudging uphill from the River Cluster through all that snow to get to the Hop for play rehearsal, I never imagined I would one day be HERE. Standing at the Old Pine Lectern. Staring out at all of you. About to throw down on some wisdom for the Dartmouth commencement address. So, you know, moments.
Also, I’m here because I really, really wanted to eat some EBAs.
Okay.
I want to say right now that every single time someone asked me what I was going to talk about in this speech, I would boldly and confidently say that I had all kinds of wisdom to share.
I was lying.
I feel wildly unqualified to be giving advice. There is no wisdom here. So all I can do is talk about some stuff that could maybe be useful to you. From one Dartmouth grad to another. Some stuff that won’t ever show up in Meredith Grey voice-overs or Papa Pope monologues
. Some stuff I probably shouldn’t be telling you here now. Because of the uploading and the streaming and websites. But I am going to pretend that it is twenty years ago. That it is just you and me. That we’re having a fireside chat. Screw the outside world and what they think. I’ve already said the word poop like five times already anyway . . . things are getting real up in here.
Wait.
Before I talk to you, I want to talk to your parents. Because the other thing about it being twenty years later is that I’m a mother now. So I know some things. Some very different things. I have three girls. I’ve been to the show. You don’t know what that means. But your parents do. You think this day is all about you. But your parents . . . the people who raised you . . . the people who endured you . . . they potty-trained you, they taught you to read, they survived you as a teenager, they have suffered twenty-one years and not once did they kill you. This day . . . you call it your graduation day. But this day is not about you. This is their day. This is the day they take back their lives, this is the day they earn their freedom. This day is their independence day. Parents, I salute you. And as I have an eight-month-old, I hope to join your ranks of freedom in twenty years!!
Okay.
So here it comes. The real-deal part of my speech. Or as you may call it, Stuff Some Random Alum Who Makes TV Shows Thinks You Should Know Before You Graduate.
You ready? Here we go!
When people give these kinds of speeches, they usually tell you all kinds of wise and heartfelt things. They have wisdom to impart. They have lessons to share. They tell you: Follow your dreams. Listen to your spirit. Change the world. Make your mark. Find your inner voice and make it sing. Embrace failure. Dream. Dream and dream big. As a matter of fact, dream and don’t stop dreaming until your dream comes true.
I think that’s crap.
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 . . .”
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