Oh yes you can. Yes you can get out of bed. Yes you can walk the dog in the rain. Yes you can answer every email, every text, every everything. Yes you can ask for the laundry to be delivered. Yes you can go to the gym. Yes you can read Joan Didion again. Yes You speak up. Yes, yes, yes. Shonda Rhimes wrote in The Year Of Yes, “I am not lucky. You know what I am? I am smart, I am talented, I take advantage of the opportunities that come my way and I work really, really hard. Don’t call me lucky. Call me a badass.” Read that again. That affirmation of who you are. That’s the Yes. Stay with it. Yes, yes you can. All the things that have had NO attached to it? Discard as many as possible. Go with your gut, your yes. Yes opens up, elevates you, your mood. Stay with your yes, reject the negatives, the things that drag you down, your feelings about yourself, those demons, push them away, use your YES as a weapon to defend yourself from the darkness but also, as a way to embrace the possibilities, the probabilities, the things you want to happen for yourself. Yes is the way to the inevitable–that job you want, that person you’re looking for, that dress meant for your body. Go with your Yes, always.

Pam Grier: “When you create a mystery, people want to see it and attack it if they can’t have it. So I was like, here’s the mystery. I hope I bore you and you’ll never get a hard-on again.”

Patti Smith: “I feel like at my age I can do whatever I want, pretty much, as long as I don’t hurt anybody and that includes dressing the way I want, everywhere I go.”

Michelle Williams: “Believe her.”

Gina Yashere: “In England I had a good career, I was making a great living, but as a black entertainer in England, there’s a glass ceiling.”

Rodeo Women. Who Ride.

And now have a laugh with Janelle James.