Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand In the Sun and Be Your Own Person

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Description

The instant New York Times bestseller from the creator of Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal and executive producer of How to Get Away With Murder shares how saying YES changed her life. “As fun to read as Rhimes’s TV series are to watch” (Los Angeles Times).

She’s the creator and producer of one of the most groundbreaking and audacious shows on television today. Her iconic characters live boldly and speak their minds. So who would suspect that Shonda Rhimes is an introvert? That she hired a publicist so she could avoid public appearances? That she suffered panic attacks before media interviews?

With three children at home and three hit television shows, it was easy for Shonda to say she was simply too busy. But if truth be told, she was also afraid. And then, over Thanksgiving dinner, her sister muttered something that was both a wake up and a call to arms: You never say yes to anything. Shonda knew she had to embrace the challenge: for one year, she would say YES to everything that scared her.

This poignant, intimate, and hilarious memoir explores Shonda’s life before her Year of Yes—from her nerdy, book-loving childhood to her devotion to creating television characters who reflected the world she saw around her. The book chronicles her life after her Year of Yes had begun—when Shonda forced herself out of the house and onto the stage; when she learned to explore, empower, applaud, and love her truest self. Yes.

“Honest, raw, and revelatory” (The Washington Post), this wildly candid and compulsively readable book reveals how the mega talented Shonda Rhimes in spite of everything achieved badassery worthy of a Shondaland character. Best of all, she “can help motivate even the most made up our minds homebody to get out and check out something new” (Chicago Tribune).

An Amazon Best Book of November 2015: I usually shy away from books with titles like Year of Yes – hokey, I think, or glib. But even so, I don’t need a self-help manual; I like to take my self-empowerment lying down, on the couch. Except… except that Rhimes, the creator/producer of such intelligent TV shows as Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal is not only wiser, funnier, and cooler than your average therapist – she’s also been there, if “there” is the land of the angry, scared and emotionally dysfunctional. Never mind that she graduated from Dartmouth, is a proud and loving mother to her three kids, AND owns Thursday night TV, Rhimes was a mess until her sister made a chance statement at Thanksgiving – “You never say Yes to anything.” That’s when Rhimes made up our minds not only to face her fears but to hug the life out of them. (OK, so some of her fears involve wearing a Carolina Herrera dress, gorgeous shoes and showing up at a star-studded benefit… but hey, fears is fears.) Rhimes found that saying Yes occasionally, satirically, also meant saying no, too – as in, and this is my version, Yes, I want to be a thin person. No I don’t want to eat a whole pecan pie in one sitting because I’m more lonely than hungry. She also discovered that self-acceptance doesn’t all the time go smoothly: as she pithily observes, occasionally the people who loved you when you were angry, dark and “twisty” don’t like to hang around when you lighten up. So what, she says. At least you’ve figured out how to live more or less happily ever after — with yourself. – Sara Nelson

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