New Year Book Recommendation

Last week I finished a book I really, really enjoyed - and I think you would too!  It's called "The Year of Yes:  How to Dance It Out, Stand in the Sun and Be Your Own Person" by Shonda Rhimes.  You would have to have avoided all pop culture over the last 10 years to not know who Shonda Rhimes is - the creator of Gray's Anatomy, Scandal and the producer of How to Get Away With Murder.  I don't even watch those shows and I know who she is :-)

So here is the set up - at the height of her popularity and professional success, with three kids, family and friends she adored, she complained to her sister about her life.  Her sister replied, "You always say no to everything." Her sister's comment got under her skin, so she decided to spend a year saying yes to all the things that scared her.

The book is written like a long conversation, and is a pleasure to read.  Shonda has such great takes on being F.O.D. (First. Only. Different.) and motherhood.  Here are a couple of my favorite parts (I am just now realizing that the lines I highlighted are all motherhood related :-)):

"Being a mother isn't a job. It's who someone is.  It's who I am. You can quit a job. I can't quit being a mother. I'm a mother forever."

"Being a mother requires us to get it together or risk messing up another person forever."

"Look, I am devoted to my children. Deeply. But my devotion has nothing to do with home-baked goods.  It has nothing to do with any kind of public show of maternal fabulousness.  Because - you know me by now - public displays of any kind of fabulousness are never going to happen for me.  I am devoted to knowing my children, to reading books with them, to hearing the stories they tell me and to the conversations we have.  To making them citizens of the world. To raising strong feminist human beings who love and believe in themselves.  That is hard enough for me without delivering home-baked goods to school on a Friday."

For a selfhelp, non-fiction book, it was a very fun, fast, and enjoyable read!