I am never more sure of myself about a topic than when I have absolutely no experience with it.
Saying ‘no’ has gotten me here... ‘here’ sucks. Saying ‘yes’ might be my way to someplace better. If not a way to someplace better, at least a way to someplace different.
Say yes? There’s no way to plan. There’s no way to hide. There’s no way to control this. Not if I am saying yes to everything. Yes to everything scary. Yes to everything that takes me out of my comfort zone. Yes to everything that feels like it might be crazy. Yes to everything that feels out of character. Yes to everything that feels goofy. Yes to everything. Everything. Say yes. Yes.
When you sit down to write every day, it becomes easier and easier to tap into that creative space inside your mind.
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.
Now, I’m no longer looking for the enemy. So I no longer see the enemy.
I make up characters. I create whole worlds in my head. I add words to the lexicon of daily conversation – maybe you talk about your vajayjay and tell your friend that someone at work got Poped because of my shows. I birth babies, I end lives. I dance it out. I wear the white hat. I operate. I gladiate. I exonerate. I spin yarns and tell tall tales and sit around the campfire. I wrap myself in fiction. Fiction is my job. Fiction is it. Fiction is everything. Fiction is my jam.
Don’t ever let anyone tell you that food doesn’t work. Anyone who tells you that food doesn’t work is either stupid or a liar or has never had food before. You can tell them I said so. It works. Putting food on top of it works. If food did not work, if it didn’t work its slutty, gluttonous, more-is-more magic, everyone in America would be Angelina Jolie thin. No one would drive-thru. No one would sprinkles or pinkberry or any of it.
Don’t apologize. Don’t explain. Don’t ever feel less than. When you feel the need to apologize or explain who you are, it means the voice in your head is telling you the wrong story. Wipe the slate clean. And rewrite it.
I can experience life or I can give up on it.
There’s a hum that happens inside my head when I hit a certain writing rhythm, a certain speed. When laying track goes from feeling like climbing a mountain on my hands and knees to feeling like flying effortlessly through the air. Like breaking the sound barrier. everything inside me just shifts. I break the writing barrier. And the feeling of laying track changes, transforms, shifts from exertion into exultation.
Don’t call me lucky. Call me a badass.
The goal is that everyone should get to turn on the TV and see someone who looks like them and loves like them. And just as important, everyone should turn on the TV and see someone who doesn’t look like them and love like them. Because perhaps then they will learn from them. Perhaps then they will not isolate them. Marginalize them. Erase them. Perhaps they will even come to recognize themselves in them. Perhaps they will even learn to love them.
Being a mother still happens if you don’t stay home with your kids. It still happens if you get a job and go to work. It happens if you are an Army Ranger and you’re deployed overseas and your kid is rating with your parents. Still a mother. Still not a job. Working or staying home, one is still a mother.
This is all made worse by the fact that I’m competitive. Not normal-people competitive. Not friendly competitive. Scary-psychotic competitive. Never hand me a volleyball. Don’t ask me to play a fun hand of cards. I have never heard of a casual round of Scrabble.
I felt bolstered by their friendship. By their loyalty. By the idea that I had these amazing friends, these members of my tribe, these gladiators at my back.
I birth babies, I end lives. I dance it out. I wear the white hat. I operate. I gladiate. I exonerate. I spin yarns and tell tall tales and sit around the campfire. I wrap myself in fiction. Fiction is my job. Fiction is it. Fiction is everything. Fiction is my jam.
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.
You can wake up one day and find that you are interesting and powerful and engaged.
So you made it out of a uterus a long time ago. Big deal,” I whisper. “So did everybody else on the planet. What else you got?