It may be different for you. Your happy place. Your joy. The place where life feels more good than not good. It doesn’t have to be kids. My producing partner Betsy Beers would tell me that for her that place is her dog. My friend Scott would probably tell me that for him it is spending time being creative. You might say it’s being with your best friend. Your boyfriend, your girlfriend. A parent. A sibling. It’s different for everyone. For some of you, it might even be work. And that, too, is valid.
This Yes is about giving yourself the permission to shift the focus of what is a priority from what’s good for you over to what makes you feel good.
(Wait. Not heroin. Heroin is not your happy place.
Just cross all drugs off the list.
Are we clear? Okay.
Find a good happy place. A positive one.)
I have shifted my priorities. My job is still incredibly important. It’s just that playing with my kids is now more important than my job.
In case the idea of doing this makes you nervous, makes you anxious, freaks you out? Makes you think I’m an idiot?
You might say, “That’s all very nice for you, Shonda. You’re the boss at your job but I am a cashier so please tell me how I can turn my back on my job and still feed my family, stupid TV lady with your lace shoes and your diamonds. I hope your tiara squeezes your brains right out of your head.”
I agree with you.
Whitney Houston. Curling iron. Solidarity.
But here’s the thing that I hope helps. Here’s the thing that I learned very quickly: nobody wants to spend that much time with me. Or with you. You know why?
You aren’t Taylor Swift.
Or Curious George.
Or Rihanna.
Or the Muppets.
I mean that in a good way. A great way.
I mean that you can do this. I mean no matter how busy you are, how hectic your life is, you can probably pull this off in some way.
Emerson and Beckett only ever want to play with me for fifteen minutes or so before they lose interest and want to go do something else. It’s an amazing fifteen minutes. But it’s fifteen minutes. After fifteen minutes, I’m no one. If I’m not a grasshopper in the yard or a Popsicle or the Very Hungry Caterpillar, I may as well be a tree. Most of the time, Harper only ever wants to talk to me for fifteen minutes as well—sometimes less. I can pull off fifteen minutes . . . I can TOTALLY pull off fifteen minutes of uninterrupted time even on my worst day.
Uninterrupted is the key: no cell phone, no laundry, no dinner, no anything. You have a busy life. You have to get dinner on the table. You have to make sure they get homework done. You have to force them to bathe. But you can do fifteen minutes.
While I was shocked to discover how little time this Yes to Play commitment really took and how easy it was to incorporate it into my daily life, it was about more than this. What was most difficult was what it forced me to face about myself.
I discovered that age-old cliché is true: people do what they like to do. I work because I like working—I am good at it, it works for me, it’s my comfort zone. Knowing, facing the fact that I was more comfortable on a soundstage than on a swing set was incredibly difficult to handle. What kind of person is more comfortable working than relaxing? Well . . . me. So this Yes required me to change. It’s a difficult challenge for a hard-working, straight-A, obsessive perfectionist to leap into a lifestyle practice that requires dropping everything to . . . play.
As I’ve said, my earliest memories were of imagining in the pantry. As I got older, I preferred the library to any other play space, the books inside to any other companion. When forced outdoors for fresh air and sunshine, I grabbed a book and stuffed it down the back of my pants to hide my contraband. Then I’d climb the willow tree in our backyard and read until my mother allowed me back in. Playing . . . ? I don’t remember any real playing . . .
My nanny, Jenny McCarthy, watches all this unfold with solemn eyes. She watches me drop my bags and get down on the floor, awkward and stiff. She offers suggestions.
“You should play with the blocks.”
“What if you all did some painting?”
Jenny McCarthy is quietly guiding me. Teaching me how to play. Teaching the stiff, introverted workaholic in me what play means for those outside the pantry doors, outside the library shelves. She’s teaching me how to reach and connect with these little extroverts so different from me.
I feel like some kind of alien. Never before on this planet. Learning what this world is like. Jenny McCarthy is showing me how to live. Through these tiny karmic beings sent by the universe to help roll the rock away from the door of my cave and shove me into that bright beautiful sun.
And I am grateful.
We run around the yard. Up and back and up and back. We have thirty-second dance parties in the kitchen. We sing show tunes. We play with baby dolls and hand puppets and Fisher-Price farms.
It’s the bubbles that do it.
I’m sitting in the backyard blowing an endless series of bubbles for the girls. The bubbles are filling the air; I’m on a roll, blowing as fast as I can to create a sea of bubbles all around their faces. They are squealing, popping bubbles and tasting bubbles and chasing bubbles. Beckett runs over and presses her sweaty body into me. She has that slight musky dirty kid smell. It always smells to me like . . .
“You smell like puppies!” I tell them.
And suddenly a painting is hung back on my wall:
My mother’s in the backyard tending to her big round roses. The sun has just gone down. And my sister Sandie and I are racing around the backyard, each with a glass Mason jar. Trying to catch fireflies. Squealing and chasing fireflies, catching them, staring at them, our faces glowing in their light. Then, just when my mother calls for bedtime, we open the jars and release them into the night air.
“You smell like puppies,” my mother laughs as she shoos us inside.
So now my memory stands corrected. I used to play. When I was this age. I played. I was happy. I liked it. I smelled liked puppies. I was a puppy party.
I played.
I don’t know why I ever stopped.
I suddenly find that I start asking myself the same question that the children ask me: wanna play?
Yes. Yes, I do.
But in order to do so, I know I have to make some real changes.
I make a rule that I will not work on Saturday or Sunday unless it’s an emergency or unless the show is filming. 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.
I 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 have to turn off my phone to do it. But I do it. I have incredibly expert people working for me who run our sets. Learning to step back and let these people have the pleasure of doing their jobs without my peering over their shoulders has been great for them and for me both.
I make a vow to come home by six p.m. every night for dinner. If an issue is happening at work, I can find a way to come home from six p.m. to eight p.m. to be with the kids and then hop on my computer and work from home after that. Technology should be making it easier and easier for this to happen.
I’m not perfect at it.
In fact, I fail as often as I succeed. But what I know now is that this downtime is helping to relight that little spark inside, it’s helping my creativity and in the long run helping me tell the stories my work needs me to tell. I give myself permission to view this downtime as essential. It’s hard to do. It’s hard to feel like I deserve any time to replenish the well when I know everyone else is working hard too. Except once again, there’s Delorse in my kitchen:
“Shonda, what happens when you get sick? What happened that time you threw
your back out? That time you had the flu?”
We don’t like to talk about it at work. It’s like tempting fate. But Delorse means when I go down, the shows go down. If I go down, eventually things in Shondaland come to a halt. Because of that track laying that has to happen. The stories originate with my brain. And if they can’t come out of my brain, no one can even begin to lay track. And if the track can’t be laid, the train cannot roll. It’s the same with Kerry Washington, Viola Davis, Ellen Pompeo—if one of them goes down, so goes a show. The cameras can’t roll without them. It makes it incredibly essential to keep in good shape.
Ellen, who seems to have more stamina and determination than anyone I’ve ever seen, once said that making twenty-four episodes of network television is like running a marathon twenty-four times. Since season one, she has treated herself like an athlete in training. Ellen believes that to do her job well, she needs to take care of herself—inside and out. Ellen’s approach becomes my inspiration. I decide maybe it’s time I started thinking the same way about my job. For me, that means that if track is going to be laid, I need some time to play.
Wanna play?
Home by six. No phones after seven. Try not to work weekends.
Then I expand it.
Wanna play?
I use it as a way of allowing myself to seek comforts I would not normally allow. “Wanna play?” starts to become a shorthand for indulging myself in ways I’d forgotten about.
Manicures? Pedicures?
Wanna play? YES.
Browse for hours in an actual bookstore on a Saturday afternoon when the kids are on a playdate?
Wanna play? YES.
A long bath with some Aretha Franklin blaring loud enough that no one can hear me singing?
Wanna play? HELL YES.
A glass of wine and a square of chocolate and fifteen minutes of guiltless silence with my door closed?
Wanna play? Please keep your voice down, but . . . yes.
Fifteen minutes, I say. What could be wrong with giving myself my full attention for just fifteen minutes?
Turns out?
Nothing.
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.
We could all use a little more love. A lot more love.
For the kids. For me.
This is the best YES.
Wanna play?
8
Yes to My Body
Here’s a thing I maybe forgot to mention.
When I decide to begin my Year of Yes?
That night I decide I am going to start saying yes to the things that scare me? That night I told you about when I am lying on the sofa with a glass of wine staring at my Christmas tree?
I am fat.
I’m not cutely chubby. Or nicely plus-size.
I am not round in my rump.
I don’t have junk in my trunk.
I’m not voluptuous.
I’m not going pa-pow and ba-bam in all the right places.
I’m not working my curves the way I did in college.
If I was, you can bet I would be wearing something cute and tight and daring you to say something about it.
But that is not what is going on.
No.
I am fat.
I am obese.
I am the biggest I have ever been in my entire life.
I am so fat that I am uncomfortable in my own skin. So fat that I’m having the surreal experience of catching a glimpse of myself in a mirror and wondering with genuine confusion, “Who is that?” It actually takes a few seconds for my brain to catch up, for me to realize, with shock, that I am looking at my own reflection. That stranger is me. I am staring at myself encased in many, many extra pounds of fat. So many I’m afraid to get on a scale.
I am massive.
But that’s not the thing.
I am massive.
But more important . . .
. . . I feel massive.
Which is the thing.
Look. I will not be told what size to be. I do not care about anyone else’s judgment about my body. I am not interested in anyone else’s ideas of what I’m supposed to look like.
I believe everyone’s body is theirs and everyone has a right to love their body in whatever size and shape and package it comes in. I will fight for anyone’s right to do so. I will kick ass and take names if I have to. Your body is yours. My body is mine. No one’s body is up for comment. No matter how small, how large, how curvy, how flat. If you love you, then I love you.
But this is not about loving me.
I don’t FEEL good.
And while part of me means it emotionally, I mostly mean it physically.
I don’t FEEL GOOD.
My knees hurt. My joints hurt. I discover that the reason I am so exhausted all the time is because I have sleep apnea. I am now on high blood pressure medication.
I can’t get comfortable.
I can’t touch my toes.
My toes are untouchable.
I need to eat a piece of cake to cope with this discovery.
I am a mess.
I do not know how this has happened.
Except I do.
Remember that genetic Powerball lottery the women in my family have won? The one that means we will never look older than a pack of terribly tired teenagers? It seems there’s also a metabolic SuperLotto that had the winning numbers—but only for HALF the women in my family. So my sisters Delorse and Sandie have the great luck of not only looking fourteen years old but also being able to eat half a cow in one sitting and never look larger than, well, a FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD. I, on the other hand, did not draw those numbers. Fat runs toward me and jumps up onto my body and clings there. Like it knows that it has found a home. Like it wants to be with its people.
I’ve battled my weight my entire life. It always seemed unfair. It was always a horrible struggle. And after a while, I decided that struggling was not worth it. So I stopped battling. I stopped starving myself. And I settled in at what seemed like a not too heavy but not skinny weight. Plus-size. Juicy. Curvy. Definitely cute. Great booty. I was healthy. I was working out. I wasn’t thinking too much about my body anyway.
And then . . . I lost control of the wheel.
Don’t ask me exactly when. I’m not sure.
But I know it coincided with my slowly closing all the doors of my life. Saying no to things. Shutting down.
And here’s the thing. It didn’t really feel like that was what was happening.
I mean, I had a lot going on.
I had some excellent excuses for letting go of that wheel.
I decided to freeze my eggs. Like, the ones inside my body. Babies. Yes! The miracle of life. In order to freeze your eggs, you have to inject yourself with some hormones. Now, if you are a naturally thin person, you seem to stay thin. If you are me . . . not so much.
Then out of nowhere, I had a minor surgery. Which made me go, “I better stop all of this working out. And maybe lie down here on this sofa for a bit to recuperate.”
Um, the surgery was on my eye.
So?
What’s your point?
It doesn’t matter that the surgery was on my eye. My EYE needed to recuperate. But when my eye was better, that sofa kind of needed me. It didn’t seem that important to get back up. Plus, there was some good TV on.
Oh, yes. TV. I had a job. Grey’s Anatomy. Then I had two jobs. I added Private Practice. Then I had three jobs. I added Scandal on top of those shows. And then just as I said good-bye to Private Practice, we began producing How to Get Away with Murder. And the more shows I had, the more I could be found at my desk or on a sofa in an editing room. The more I could be found sitting on my butt. The more I sat, the less I moved.
The less I moved?
Don’t make me say it . . .
&nb
sp; And the shows were doing so well. Which was like some kind of cruel joke. If something had failed, the irony was that I would have had the time to take myself to the gym. I would have had the time to get some rest. I would have had the time to take care of myself. At least, that’s the story I told myself. But nothing got canceled. I was succeeding. I was doing more than succeeding.
It’s incredibly rare for a television drama to run even three seasons, and by this point, the shows I’d created had all gone at least five.
Shondaland was a brand now. The studio expected us to produce more shows. The network expected me to maintain the quality of the ones currently on the air. Now I owned an entire night of the most expensive real estate on television. TGIT had taken over social media. Everyone around me seemed invested. Very invested. I started having nightmares about getting canceled.
Delorse and Jenny McCarthy fussed over me, worrying that my creativity would be affected by stress. 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. Making television for me is . . . blissful. I can make stuff up the way other people can sing—I have simply always been able to hit all the notes. At its core, a TV show is just a bigger pantry. So I wasn’t worried about writing the shows or making the shows.
I was worried about rising expectations. I was worried about the stakes.
Oh, yeah. Maybe I should mention: there are stakes, and man oh man, are they high.
As the shows got more popular, I was acutely, painfully aware of what was at stake. I smiled, refused to answer the question, pretended I didn’t know what reporters were asking me about when they asked about race. But you can’t be raised black in America and not know.
This wasn’t just my shot. It was ours.
I had to do everything right. I had to keep it all afloat. I had to run to the top of the mountain. I could not rest, I could not fall, I could not stumble, I could not quit. Failing to reach the summit was not an option. Failing would be bigger than just me. Blowing it would reverberate for decades to come. With Grey’s Anatomy, it would mean that giving an African-American woman her own show with a cast that looked like the real world was a mistake. I proved it wasn’t.
Year of Yes Page 10