November 2015

Before I listened to YEAR OF YES, I knew little about Shonda Rhimes beyond the fact that she “owned Thursday night” on ABC with her lineup of shows --- “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Scandal” and “How to Get Away with Murder” (the latter two are favorites of mine). I assumed that she was a super outgoing, type-A personality who was brash, bold and full of herself. From the first moments I listened to the audiobook, I knew I was wrong. Instead I found a woman who is competitive in everything, including knitting (which made me laugh), but also who hung back not accepting invitations and shying away from experiences. As successful as she is, I was surprised to learn that this was something she needed to overcome!

Two years ago on Thanksgiving, her sister made a comment to the effect of “You never say yes to anything.” And that got her thinking I am going to say yes to everything that comes my way in the next year. 

Rhimes’ narration made it all the more personal. There are parts at the beginning where the pacing of her speech takes on the same staccato beat of her “Scandal” character, Olivia Pope. There were several highs in it for me --- the school bake sale and her thoughts on motherhood were among them. One part that particularly struck a chord was during a speech she gave accepting an award where she spoke about diversity. In MANY of the meetings that I sit in on, mainly about kids and teen books, people talk about diversity --- how to show it in books and build careers for diverse authors. Rhimes spoke about how she is recognized for creating diverse characters on her shows. She said that instead of thinking that she is showing diversity, she sees it as normalizing, showing the world as it is. Ponder that today. Somehow that word feels even more inclusive to me as it reflects how the world looks and encourages us to mirror it, instead of trying to artificially create it.

Traveling through her journey of “yes,” you can see Rhimes awaken parts of herself that had been quiet before. But YEAR OF YES is not preachy or how-to. She is irreverent, self-deprecating, smart and funny…and, okay, she can talk as fast as me. I can tell that the woman who started this book is not the one who wrote “the end.” I believe a lot of us think more about “no” than “yes.” Over the past few weeks, I found myself thinking about how many times I say no when I really should say YES --- and doing something about that!