Mental Health Break
But I didn’t take just the month-long vacations. I also stopped working on Sundays. Even God rested on the seventh day, and if He needs a break, so do I. Even if it’s just for a few hours on that one day, to relax in your own space, do it! I found a way to incorporate little escapes into my schedule year-round, even if it just means a drive to some country inn an hour away. And I have one hard-and-fast rule that I stick to: “I am out of town and unavailable. Don’t call me!”
There are lots of different ways to take a vacation, even if you can’t afford a month off to travel somewhere exotic. Some people just need that time first thing in the morning to go to the gym, where they can’t take any calls and there’s no one to bother them. For some women, it’s going to the spa and having a massage. Some people wake up and meditate or read their holy book, whatever that may be. It’s their time with themselves, and it should be sacrosanct.
For me, it’s taking a few minutes out of my day to just breathe. Yoga taught me how to concentrate on the breath, and it’s been a helpful tool for finding balance in my life. Before I go to bed at night, especially if I can’t sleep, I just sit and take ten deep breaths. When I get up in the morning, I give myself ten minutes to clear my head of all the clutter. I just clear my mind or think of something positive. I switch off my phone and concentrate on breathing and stretching, trying not to focus on anything else that’s coming my way. And somehow it works. When I start my day like that, I feel so much more positive and prepared for whatever it is I have to face. Like the August vacation, when I come back all recharged and ready to conquer the world, this mini mental break helps me decompress and frees my spirit.
Just breathe. Take ten minutes. Even if you just have to lock yourself in the bathroom. Take that time to be with yourself, by yourself.
Yoga’s a great way to get back in touch with yourself. It teaches you to move and stretch toward your pain. When you’re holding certain poses, that pain becomes a measure of where you are, physically and emotionally, and the more you do it, the farther you can get. The pain makes you aware of the moment. I’m no yogi or guru, but I’ve learned over the years that sometimes we run away from the pain, and when we do that, when we mask the pain, our emotional issues tend to pile up like a bunch of dirty laundry. You can’t think straight in a space that’s all cluttered like that. But when you run toward the pain and face it down, you can get rid of it.
It all comes back to boundaries. Whether it’s your personal life, your business dealings, or even just your relationship with yourself, your soul needs to strike that balance between yes and no. I’m not perfect. I get thrown off balance very easily. This past year has been hectic, and I haven’t taken the time for myself I needed. There was too much to get done. That’s why I am glad I’m writing this book. I’m going to go back and read my own words, again and again. It will be a reminder to me to heed my own advice. So, Dana, if you’re reading this for the tenth, twentieth, or hundredth time, here it is:
Take the time to check in with yourself, regularly. Don’t lose yourself. Love yourself.
CHAPTER 8
Joy
The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.
—OPRAH WINFREY
I put my hands over my eyes before they lifted up the cover, for maximum impact. Then I saw it. That beautiful new star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I reached out to touch it—to make sure it was real. Then I ran my hands over my name in polished brass. I caressed the shiny pink granite embedded in the ground. This was it. I made it. And it was all the more special because I was with the people who believed in me the whole time. That morning of January 6, 2006, was a moment of pure, unadulterated joy that I will never forget. It had to be, hands down, one of the best moments of my life. Dad was to my right and Mom was to my left, and friends and family were all around me. The look was all over my face. I was like a little kid kneeling on the red carpet, squealing with delight. My heart was also overflowing with love and appreciation for my fans. They lifted me up and got me to that point. Without them, none of this would have been possible. I wanted to tell each and every one of them how much their support meant to me. I said:
“Stay up, peace, and I love you, fans, fans, fans! It’s you who made queen, Queen!”
Mom, who presented the star to me, gave a speech that summed it up perfectly:
“Who would have known that in the seventies, when a pink eight-pound baby girl was born, this is where she would be today? She came out screaming, ‘Look out, world, here I come!’”
Who would have known?
Savor It
We have to savor these moments for all they’re worth. They’re not permanent. They don’t happen every day, and they may never happen again. I got real comfortable down there on that sidewalk. I blew my star a kiss. I didn’t want to leave!
I didn’t even know until that day that I was the first hip-hop artist to ever get a star on the Walk of Fame. It’s one of the few forms of recognition I really wanted. That star is inspiration. It’s someone’s dream. I remember walking down Hollywood Boulevard when I was seventeen and seeing all those names and thinking, “Wow, look at that! That’s so-and-so and so-and-so. I would love to be able to do that.” I knew the only way of being able to get that kind of recognition was to accomplish a lot. So for me to have come from where I’m from, a regular girl from Newark, New Jersey, it was confirmation that, yes, you can do anything.
I felt like my life had come full circle. Some other girl from the ’hood is going to walk the Walk of Fame, look down and see my name, and think, “Wow, she’s from Newark like me!” Or, “Wow, she’s a bigger girl like me!” “If she can do it, I can do it!”
And it can’t get more real than the ground under your feet. They gave me a prime piece of real estate, right next to Michael Jackson’s tile near the northwest corner of Hollywood and North Orange. I have a music legend right next door to me. It doesn’t matter how many people walk on top of it. The star doesn’t have to be spit-shined. It’s right there, in a location where everybody can see it. It’ll be there after I’m gone. My place. We all want a place. We all want to feel as if we contributed. We all want to be acknowledged. That doesn’t happen by having everything handed to you. It happens only when you strive for it. That star was proof that, yeah, I’ve done a couple of things.
We kept the celebrations going all day. I did some interviews, then we all had lunch and hung out for a few hours. Then some friends threw me a party at the Standard Hotel. We had a blast. The music was great, and all of us—my mom, my dad, my entire extended family, all of my closest friends, and I—danced the night away.
You’ve got to celebrate. Like I learned when Winki died, life isn’t promised, and those special moments need to be cherished for whatever they are, whether they’re a graduation, a promotion, a wedding day, or even a small thing like losing five pounds. We get so caught up in our business that too often we forget how to live, and we miss all those moments that should be giving us joy.
There’s no point in taking a big bite out of life unless you take the time to savor the flavor. Some women never learn how to do this enough. They let the belief that they aren’t good enough hold them back. They downplay their successes, almost apologizing for them. We’re quick to recognize and support others in their achievements, but we put the words “I’m just” in front of our job title or role in life, as if it’s not even worthy of a mention. We need to do better for ourselves. The queen inside us demands it. Whether it’s a promotion or something as small as learning a new computer skill or getting through a checklist of errands, we have to learn to say to ourselves, “Good job! I’m proud of you!”
You don’t have to tell me to celebrate. I’m the girl who’s quick to throw a party. But it wasn’t always that way. When I won my first Grammy, I barely felt it. I was so deep in my grief over Winki’s death that the moment came and went. But I’ve made up for it since then. When I
found out I was nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar for Chicago, I was like a little kid on Christmas morning. I’d just come home from spending the weekend in Atlanta. I’d been up all night on the tour bus, watching the first season of Good Times in its entirety. It was drafty on the bus and I couldn’t sleep. When I finally got home I headed straight to bed, and I’d just slipped under the covers, all comfy cozy, when Shakim called me. He said:
“Yo, we got the nomination!”
“What nomination?”
“The Oscar nomination.”
“No waaaaaay!”
I went jumping, running, and screaming around the house. I called all my friends and woke them up. My assistant was downstairs sleeping, so I dived on top of her and woke her up. I said, “Yo, we got it!”
It was a special moment, because it was so unexpected.
No Moment Too Small
Oscar nominations, Grammy wins, a star on Hollywood Boulevard—these are all big deals. But they’re not the only moments I celebrate. I take the time to appreciate even the simplest things in life. I want every day to be life for the living, not just traipsing through it and existing. I want to be in the present.
Too often, I see people plugged into their BlackBerrys, iPhones, or computers. Either they need constant distractions or they feel like they have to capture every moment on their camera phones and blog their thoughts to the entire world. Somehow that’s more important to them than having a face-to-face conversation with someone who’s actually in the same room. That’s no way to live. You’re missing out on so much. Some of my most treasured memories are those times my brother and I sat around the family dinner table with our parents, just talking to each other. Those are the special moments, if for no other reason than that it’s where you want to be and everything in your world is right. No fanfare. No golden statues. Just chillin’ and passing the time with the people you love.
After dinner, Mom and Dad would have us read sections of the newspaper out loud, so they could see how we were doing in our reading and comprehension. If we didn’t understand a word, they’d make us go look it up in a dictionary and they’d teach us how to pronounce it. We’d surprise them later on by using it correctly in a sentence. Those conversations made us want to read more and learn. They were invaluable lessons. You can’t do that when your kids are texting each other and you’re checking your crackberry every five seconds for messages. Have you seen all those people walking around outside, talking on their cell phones? It could be the most perfect day of the summer, but they’re blind to it. Their bodies are there, but their minds are somewhere else.
No moment is too inconsequential to explore. It could be something as small as feeling the cool breeze on my face, enjoying a walk by the beach with a good friend, or just kicking back at my mother’s house, drinking iced tea and watching all the wildlife in the woods at the edge of her backyard in New Jersey. She’s feeding a whole family of raccoons back there!
My favorite vacation of all time was a trip I took with my mother to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, a few years ago. It was special because it was just the two of us—a mother-and-daughter trip. Nothing was planned. We just did things on the spur of the moment. One day I convinced her to ride a wave runner with me. Another time we took a golf lesson together, and I saw that Mom had quite the swing, like me! I thought, “Oh, so that’s where I get it from.”
We decided to rent a Jeep and take a drive to the original Hotel California in Todos Santos, an artists’ colony about a forty-five-minute drive away. We ate lunch at the hotel, explored the streets, and talked to some of the artists in their galleries. Finding that place on our own, we felt like a couple of intrepid explorers.
Back in Cabo, Mom bonded with a woman at the hotel who was on the food services staff. She recommended a restaurant in town where her husband worked, so that night we tried it. The food was great, but we got torn up by mosquitoes. It was so bad that we had to leave before dinner was over. It was painful. We were scratching ourselves and slapping each other’s arms and legs every time one of those little beasts landed on us. But we were laughing so hard! It was just one of those funny moments that we got to experience together.
We shared a two-bedroom suite, and one night we decided to go to bed early. Mom went to her room, and I went to my room and flicked on the television. All of a sudden, I could hear laughter coming from the other side of the suite. And every time I heard the laughter, I was laughing myself. We were both watching something and laughing in the same spots. I went into my mother’s room and asked her, “What are you watching?” It was Napoleon Dynamite. Of all the English satellite channels to choose from, we’d both stumbled on that movie. Neither of us had seen it before, so we decided to watch it together. We were on the floor, howling with laughter. It doesn’t get any better than that.
When I look at the pictures from that vacation, I look so happy just to be hanging out with my best friend in the world. What made it memorable was the spontaneity of it. We were completely in the moment. I promised myself we’d do it every year, and for the most part, we have. Together, we’re gonna cover the globe.
Go for Broke
I have great moments on the road with my dad, too. When we’re traveling, he drives for me and runs my security. He’s a former special ops guy, and he spent years as an undercover cop, so the man has eyes in the back of his head. But he also knows how to roll. He understands how to adapt to any situation and get the most out of it. We had a ball when we were filming Last Holiday. We hung out in New Orleans, Austria, Czechoslovakia. We explored the bohemian world of Prague, where all the backpackers and intellectuals like to hang. But mostly we gambled! Dad comes from a long line of professional gamblers. He’s not compulsive about it. He’s just so damn good at it. He taught me how to shoot pool, bet on horses, play craps, poker, the roulette wheel. Man, he cleaned up at the casinos in Europe. He won more than 30,000 euros one night. Dad was gambling with Timothy Hutton, and he taught Tim his method. They’d play a little blackjack, progress to a certain point, then go back to the roulette table. He explained the denominations of the chips, which are square in European casinos, not round, and he warned Tim to make sure he cashed those chips when they got to a certain amount, so he could appreciate their full value—the euro value of what he was actually gambling with—and walk away ahead of the game. “Don’t treat those chips like confetti,” he said. Tim made some serious winnings that night, too.
Good gamblers really know how to live in the moment. Scared money never wins. You also have to know that once you hit it big in a game, the odds of it happening again are slim and you should walk away. But you have to play the game to play the game. It’s for the amusement of it. Once you start telling yourself, “I gotta win this, I can’t afford to lose that,” you’re sunk. It’s just like life itself. Play to win!
My dad and I have a ball wherever we go. Doing thirty cities on a tour bus can get pretty monotonous, so we laugh and joke and tell stories. I love the simple stuff, like pulling into a Waffle House for breakfast or doing a little shopping at Wal-Mart. People do a double take when they see Queen Latifah in these places, but they’re always respectful and friendly. They usually want to chat and take a picture or get an autograph, and I’ve had some pleasant conversations with regular people when I’ve been out on the road. A couple of years ago, we even stopped at Six Flags Magic Mountain to go on a few rides. It was hot that day, and we started running around and squirting water at each other from our plastic squeeze bottles. People couldn’t believe what they were seeing—a celebrity doing the same things they like to do, having fun with friends and family.
My dad learned how to live every day like it was his last when he was fighting in Vietnam. He knew he was lucky if he survived yesterday. He knew that when he said good-bye to a friend, it might be the last time he ever saw him. Maybe the circumstances forced things to an extreme level, but he made every moment as rip-roaring as he could. He went hell for broke.
No Regr
ets
After I made Last Holiday, a journalist asked me what I would do if someone told me I had only three weeks to live. My answer would still be the same. I’d go hell for broke, too. I’d definitely spend time with my family and friends. Then I’d probably go somewhere I really wanted to go, like a safari in Africa or the Great Wall of China. Or I’d just hang out in Jamaica and drink a Red Stripe and relax. Just enjoy the water. I would enjoy nature. I’d look at the sky, swim, and hold babies. Since I wouldn’t have time to have one, I’d hold my little nephew. And watch the kids laugh, ’cause they always crack me up when they laugh. They’ll laugh at anything. I’d seek out the simple pleasures, then get ready to get on up out of here.
And I’d have no regrets. I would not change a thing.
If I ran into a nineteen-year-old version of myself, I’d just tell her to live, full out. I might also tell her to go ahead and have a few babies and not worry about the timing of it. But mostly I’d tell her that she’s stronger than she thinks, and she shouldn’t doubt herself on her path. I’d say:
“Dana. Do you know who you are? Guess who you get to be! And guess what, you even get to lose weight! No, you good, you good. You just keep doing your thing!”
And I’d say the same thing to you:
Celebrate. Make every moment count. Walk tall. Wear your crown with pride.
Put on Your Crown Page 13