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" Sherri Shepherd\u2014best known for her work on The View and 30 Rock\u2014seems to have it all. Though, as a parent, a famous personality and career woman, running a smooth ship is no easy feat. Read on to find out the secrets to her success.   My hair started falling out last year. I had a lot of guilt as a single mother trying to raise a child. I had to go to work and Jeffrey was screaming that he didn&amp;#039;t want me to. You have to give yourself permission to let go of the guilt.   Women try to be it all. Even on a plane they say, &amp;quot;Put the mask on yourself and then your child.&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;m thinking, &amp;quot;I have to do Jeffrey&amp;#039;s first.&amp;quot; But if you don&amp;#039;t help yourself, you can&amp;#039;t help anyone else.   Working with Tracy Morgan on 30 Rock is really great. I love Tracy. He&amp;#039;s wonderful. Well, until his fish tank caught fire\u2014his apartment burned up and flooded my apartment. We live in the same building, but I&amp;#039;m eight floors below him and we had to evacuate. I told Jeffrey, &amp;quot;Get Momma&amp;#039;s wigs! If we each grab one thing, I&amp;#039;m grabbing you and you&amp;#039;re grabbing your momma&amp;#039;s hair. Not the photo albums, get Momma&amp;#039;s hair!&amp;quot;   Humor is in the DNA. I&amp;#039;ve always had a quirky way of looking at things. It&amp;#039;s my coping mechanism. When I was 11, my father moved us to the all-white suburbs of Chicago. And I had boobies. I got called a lot of names and people didn&amp;#039;t want to be friends with me. It was traumatic, but I learned that if I made people laugh, they got past the color of my skin.   I pray a lot. I go to that place in my mind. For me, I&amp;#039;m on a beach and God is sitting next to me. I can hear the sound of the waves hitting the rocks. The wind whips through my hair (or my wig, I should say) and God and I just talk. I can&amp;#039;t swim and I&amp;#039;m terrified of drowning, but I still love being by water\u2014just not in it.   I was diagnosed at age 41 with type 2 diabetes. It was a big wakeup call\u2014my mother died at the same age from diabetic complications. What I choose today will affect me tomorrow. Yesterday I chose to eat cornbread and today I&amp;#039;m not feeling so great. But I&amp;#039;m a grown woman. I made that choice and I own up to it.   I want to be around to see my son walk down the aisle and to play with my grandkids. I wish I could just call up my mother and say, &amp;quot;Let&amp;#039;s hang out.&amp;quot; I love it when I see women who have relationships with their mothers, because I don&amp;#039;t have that.   Give Yourself a Permission! In her new book, Permission Slips, The View cohost Sherri Shepherd gives herself permission slips to do things she enjoys and to let go of the guilt about it. It&amp;#039;s such a wonderful idea, we decided to spread her message. Print out the permission slip below and go ahead and take that extra-long coffee break, use the TV as a half-hour of babysitting or buy yourself something special. You&amp;#039;ll be glad you did.   Permission Slip   For more of Sherri&amp;#039;s wisdom and hilarious anecdotes, hear an interview with her on RadioWD (WomansDay.com/RadioWD). And check out her new sitcom (appropriately titled Sherri) on Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET/PT on Lifetime. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/relationships/family-friends/a4207/catching-up-sherri-shepherd-93961/>