More from Shonda Rhimes

Whenever you see me somewhere succeeding in one area of my life, that almost certainly means I am failing in another area of my life.

SR

Shonda Rhimes

Dartmouth College Commencement 2014, 2014

18:01

Video starts at 18:01 — the moment this quote was spoken

The Story Behind This Quote

In the most vulnerable passage of her speech, Rhimes dismantled the myth of 'having it all.' She described her typical day: waking up at dawn to write scripts, managing hundreds of employees across three television productions, attending network meetings, doing press interviews — and then racing home to be a mother to her three daughters, often arriving too late for bedtime. The audience laughed, but Rhimes wasn't joking. She was making a point that no one talks about: success in one arena always comes at a cost in another. When her shows were thriving, she was missing school plays. When she was being a great mom, scripts were falling behind. The honest truth, she told the graduates, was that balance is a myth, and anyone who claims to have achieved it is either lying or delusional.

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