Peace From Broken Pieces: How to Get Through What You're Going Through

by Vanzant, Iyanla

  Nana got sick and that really got Mommy’s attention. It got Jenni’s attention and everyone else’s too. Nana stayed sick for years and Mommy did all that she could to accommodate and take care of Nana until she died years later. All the while, Jenni was determined to become worthy of her mommy’s love and attention. She dedicated her life to her mommy. Jenni didn’t do the things regular teenage girls did. Jenni always worked and she would give her money to make things better for the family. One summer Jenni worked a summer youth job and never got paid. It was Thanksgiving time and Mommy didn’t have any money.Mommy was in law school now. Finally Jenni got her summer youth employment check in the mail. It was for $131. What did Jenni do, she took her check, cashed it and bought Thanksgiving dinner. Mommy was pleased. She smiled and Jenni was happy to see her smile.

  Because Jenni spent so much time trying to be a big girl, she never really explored life. She didn’t join teams and clubs at school. She wentto school, kept her grades up, worked long hours. When Mommy started her own company, Jenni was there. When Mommy started speaking and writing books, Jenni did whatever she could to help out. Jenni enjoyed working with Mommy. Even when there was no money, she got to spend time with her mommy. And when there was money, they had even more fun together, even if they just went out for ice cream. It didn’t matter to Jenni either way; as long as she could please her mommy she knew she was doing a good thing.

  Years and years have passed now. Jenni still loves her mommy and does whatever she can to help out. Mommy is really famous now. She has written lots of books and traveled all around the world helping people. Jenni has gotten to go with Mommy to many of the places she’s traveled to. It’s been wonderful. Mommy did exactly what she said she was going to do. She made a better life for the family. Jenni is proud of Mommy and all that she’s done to help Mommy out over the years.There’s just one thing: in living her life for Mommy, Jenni never really lived a life of her own. Now Jenni is all grown up, with a daughter of her own who she always tries to share special moments with, yet she is still longing for some sense of worthiness. Jenni never realized that her worthiness would not come from her mother’s approval of her. Her worthiness would have to come from her doing something with her own life. Sure, Jenni has dreams and goals of her own, she just seems to have a hard time following them. She feels guilty if everything is not perfect for Mommy and she can’t do anything about it. She feels bad when things don’t go well for Mommy. She feels resentful when she does all she can for Mommy and someone else gets the credit. Jenni was just trying to be a big girl, and now that she is, she realizes she doesn’t even know what that means.

  Jenni is sick again. This time she’s not faking it to get Mommy’s attention. Jenni knows that the last thing Mommy wants is for her to be sick. But over the years Jenni has developed a belief in suffering and unworthiness. Jenni, over the years, has come to believe that only those who suffer and struggle long and hard like Mommy did will become worthy of fame, fortune and attention. Jenni doesn’t believe that she has suffered enough to be worthy yet. Jenni has cancer. She doesn’t wantto be sick and it frightens her, but she hasn’t yet learned what it is she needs to learn to overcome this belief in unworthiness and suffering. What is the lesson?

  When you become committed to knowing what you need to know and to seeing what you need to see in order to heal, you will know and you will heal. When life forces you to sit down, get still, and get clear about what it is that is hurting you, you will sit down and you will get clear. You will get clear about how you have hurt yourself and others, about how you continue to do it, and about the payoff you receive for staying in pain. When you bring a child into the world and find yourself with the task of placing one last kiss on the face that you have washed and kissed and nuzzled just before you close the lid of that child’s casket, you know something that you wish that you did not. You see things that you would rather not. And you become clear about one thing: If you can live through burying your child, you can live through anything.

  When I got still, I recognized my addiction to suffering. My habitual search for pain. I also realized that it had nothing to do with anyone or anything outside of myself. Sure, I had been taught and experienced some things as a child, but I had grown enough, learned enough, and healed enough to know better. I knew better! And if I didn’t know before, I knew after reading Gemmia’s journals. However, because no one had ever validated my learning, growing, or healing, I invalidated what I knew and saw and felt. The worst part of it for me was that I had taught Gemmia to do the same thing. To deny herself. To discount herself. She had watched me so closely. She had learned so much about me. And she had taught me a great deal.

  The most important thing I learned from Gemmia, and the thing she recognized about me that I had discounted, was my capacity to love. Despite all of my issues, she was clear that from the inside out, I had a loving soul. Her words echoed those of Ms. O. Gemmia saw me as a very, very big person. She also saw that my bigness was not attached to ego or pride. It was attached to the depth of my love.

  I didn’t understand any of this throughout my life or my marriage. I became confused by people’s response to me. I was very confused by my husband’s response to me and my loving. It took me five months in bed, reading and rereading those ten years’ worth of journals to come to the realization that in the face of my bigness—the grace and favor of God in my life—most people, including my daughter, felt that they did not measure up. In the case of my husband, because he did not believe he could measure up, he had to attempt to tear me down. As for me, I didn’t accept my own love and depth of my humanity. Instead, I attracted and invited people into my life to prove that my personal lie was true—that I was bad, wrong and unlovable. It was the pathology I inherited. It was the story running through my DNA. It was a down right filthy lie and, I was going to put an end to it. I had no clue that Gemmia had already done it.

  Your mail really piles up when you don’t read it for five months. One of the first things I did when I got out of bed was go through my mail. I had missed all of the spring sales and most of my coupons were expired. Two of my magazine subscriptions had expired. There were literally hundreds of cards and equally as many demands for payment. There were several notices indicating that something was going on with the mortgage on my house. This, I assumed, was the reason there were three notices for certified mail.

  One certified letter came from Florida. I didn’t recognize the name or the address on the envelope. I put it in the pile with the magazines and catalogs I wanted to keep. I took the pile into my garden, by the waterfall where the frogs were doing their spring mating calls. There was one bullfrog whose mating call was so loud, I considered buying him a female frog just to shut him up. Instead, I opened the mail. The letter from Florida was a petition for an uncontested divorce.

  When did I get lost?

  How did I get lost?

  How long have I been lost?

  Was I ever found?

  CHAPTER 19

  STARTING OVER

  I have discovered that life doesn’t actually knock you down. It does, however, provide you with many opportunities to evaluate your standing in life: what you stand on, what you stand for, how you stand within yourself and for yourself. When your standing is weak, you don’t get knocked down. You fall down. You trip over the fallacies and fantasies that you have created or inherited. You slip on your dysfunctional puzzle pieces and your distorted sense of self. Sometimes, if you are lucky, you fall when no one is looking, so you can limp away and lick your wounds privately. More often than not, though, you fall in front of other people, and your dress flies up over your head, exposing your ripped panties to the spectators who are doing their best not to laugh at you. Those who do not laugh, but rush to help you up, often have no idea that your ego is more bruised than your knees.

  As the result of my public fall from television, I discovered that what I was standing on was quicksand. Thank goodness there were two things I could gr
ab on to and pull myself out of the pit. The first thing I grabbed on to was my unequivocal desire to serve God. The second thing was the love and support of the women in the community in which and through which I served God.

  Lydia ran my household. Almasi, Helen, and Deanna kept my business and ministry afloat. Yawfah, Rene, and Vivian kept reminding me that Gemmia’s transition, the dissolution of my marriage, and the shift in my career were not my fault. Shaheerah and Raina told me over and over again that there was something extraordinary that I was being prepared for, and the only thing required of me was to keep my heart open and my mind at peace. All I was experiencing was teaching me to become fully reliant on my inner authority, the power of God within me.

  It was a hard pill to swallow. Did my daughter need to die in order for me to become a better person? Did my husband need to reject me and dishonor our commitment so that I could have a greater purpose in life? Wrong questions! The greater, grander, deeper inquires I needed to make of myself were: What am I being asked to practice? What character values am I being asked to embody? What service can I offer the world as a result of the lessons I am learning? The answers to these questions and many more came in the form of a telephone call from the executive producer of a television program called Starting Over.

  The year before she made her transition, Gemmia had insisted that I throw my hat into the ring to be considered as one of the life coaches on Starting Over. I wasn’t interested. I had already been burned. And there were still remnants of shame from my Oprah experience lingering around the edges of my ego. Gemmia would not take no for an answer. When the producers called me, I was shocked. They were interested. I was ambivalent. I made my decision when they asked that I come live in Chicago that winter in order to shoot the first season of the show. I don’t do cold! Not the Chicago kind of cold. Besides that, my husband had moved out, and I had Oluwa to consider. By the time the second season rolled around, the show was moving to Los Angeles. They still had my application from the first season. Was I interested?

  Not really. I had buried my daughter six months earlier. I had a 12-year-old grandson to raise. I was the closest thing that my granddaughter had to her mother. Even if I could work out all of the other loose ends, I could not leave Niamoja.

  A lot had happened since her mother’s death. Nisa had moved into Gemmia’s house and was caring for Niamoja after school. Her father was on his way to getting married. He and his girlfriend were busy making plans for their future. He felt that I was forcing Niamoja to “hold on” to her mother. He said that I made everything about Gemmia. When I asked him if Niamoja could spend her first Mother’s Day without her mother with me, her grandmother, he told me that they had other plans. They were going to spend the day with his future in-laws, in another state. When I asked him if he had noticed how withdrawn and lethargic Niamoja had become, he said she was only like that around me.

  I could sense and feel that my granddaughter was in trouble, emotional and spiritual trouble. I was also aware of a pattern that could have a devastating effect if it were not handled cautiously and consciously. My mother had died when I was young. I was raised by my grandmother. Niamoja’s grandmother, Jimmy’s mother, had died when he was young. He was raised by his grandmother. Now here I was, faced with the possibility of being the caregiver for a grandchild. I wanted to be aware, awake, and available, to be there for her in a loving, positive, and powerful way. But it was quite difficult. When I called Niamoja, it was rare that anyone answered the telephone. I often left messages that were not returned for weeks. When she did call, she was sullen and withdrawn. When I went to see her after school at Gemmia’s house, she seemed almost catatonic. I asked her father if he had considered putting her in therapy. He informed me that the school psychologist had told him it wasn’t necessary; she thought that Niamoja was adjusting very well. I suggested that the psychologist be horsewhipped!

  Maybe my control issues were raging. Maybe I was holding on to Gemmia’s memory in an unhealthy way. Maybe I really was the crazy b—— he thought I was, trying to usurp his power as a parent. I didn’t know for sure and I really didn’t care. One thing I had learned from my own childhood experiences and the mistakes I made raising my own children was to put the needs of the children first and foremost. Jimmy did not agree. She was living under his roof, and I needed to keep my opinions to myself. It was that man thing again! Here was another man in my life attempting to dismiss, deny, and dishonor me. Here, again, I had a man in my life whom I had trained to treat me poorly, and I accepted it because I thought he had something that I needed and wanted. Damn! How are you going to handle it this time, Ms. Iyanla?

  I decided that I wasn’t going to make this about him and me. I was going to remain focused on the child. I wasn’t going to shrink back in fear of upsetting him. I was going to stand up for her and myself in a way I had failed to do many times before. I was going to ask for what I wanted, even if I was denied. More important, I was not going to judge my sense of what Niamoja needed in order to heal based on his often very nasty, very hurtful, and very selfish responses. Jimmy did his best to make it all about me: my attitude, my control, my insane devotion to my dead child. I decided that he was crazy. And I would treat him as such.

  Many men believe it is their right to step in to tell you what to do. I saw another pattern in action. When I was graduating from junior high and headed to high school, I wanted to be a nurse. At that time, that pursuit meant that I should attend a vocational high school. My father, who had completely absented himself from my education, swept in and declared that I would go to an academic high school.

  Niamoja’s circumstances brought me face to face with the lineage of men in our lives who decided it was their right to dishonor our desires and dictate our destinies.

  Niamoja was not my only concern. There was also Oluwa, now 13, who had just had his closest encounter with death. He had lost the woman he knew as his mother. He had also lost his grandfather and my ex-husband, the primary male figure in his life. I saw signs of some serious problems creeping into Oluwa’s behavior— and no surprise. His entire life had been turned upside down. His hormones were raging. I was emotionally drained, unable to give him the support or the discipline he needed. He began running away at least once a week. His grades were a disaster. In our affluent, undiversified Maryland suburb, the school he attended was struggling with resistance to integration in the 21st century. There were fights, name calling, bus suspensions, and threats of expulsion. And it wasn’t just the children. The adults had some issues of their own with young African American males who had voices and opinions.

  I was too awake to pretend that I was asleep. I would either have to beat him down grandma-style or ignore and enable him, as Nett and Aunt Nancy had done. I would not arrest the development of one more black man in my lineage. I had coddled and enabled bad behavior in my family long enough. I seized the opportunity to end the pattern. From where I sat, I had my clothes on and my shoes tied. I couldn’t get back into bed and pull up the covers over my head.

  One afternoon, I got a call from the school saying that Oluwa had been suspended. When I asked why, I was told that I needed to speak to the principal. I tried for three days before I got a letter indicating that Oluwa had been involved in an incident that was under investigation. His version of the story was that a girl on the bus was being pummeled with candy and Oluwa went to her aid. She attacked him, probably in fear. The other kids told him it was against the law for a nigger to touch a white woman. Oluwa had a few choice words in response, and they were the only thing the bus driver heard.

  The girl wrote a statement indicating that Oluwa had tried to help her. The principal held the “investigation” open pending the discovery of additional facts. As a trained attorney, I explained to him that the facts were clear. I reported the incident to the NAACP, which had a series of complaints against the school dating back three years. I never heard from them again. I withdrew Oluwa from the school, home-schooled him fo
r a few months, then decided that the kind of structure and discipline he needed could best be found in a Virginia military school.

  With Oluwa away at school and Niamoja’s father standing between her and me, there was nothing stopping me from accepting the Starting Over offer. Nothing, that is, except fear and shame and guilt. The old Iyanla who played small and believed she was unworthy was on her way out. Unfortunately, the new, loving, wise, brilliant Iyanla had not quite found her footing. She was still working through the old Iyanla’s shame about having her name removed from the wall of her television studio. She was still grappling with the old Iyanla’s guilt about not doing everything in her power to save Gemmia’s life. How could she help people all over the world and not save her own child? How could she speak to the masses about the power of love and the beauty of relationships and fail so miserably in her own? The new Iyanla, the faith-filled, self-assured, self-loving Iyanla was not quite sure that she had enough experience or strength to return to national television. She had never done anything of this magnitude without her best friend, Gemmia. Sure, she had some new awareness and bit more understanding, but was she really ready?

  According to the community, she was more than ready. She was born to do this. It was a new beginning. An opportunity to start over in a very real sense. It was, they said, what Gemmia would have wanted for her. It was, they said, an answer to their prayers. The new, improved, although slightly wobbly Iyanla needed to pack her belongings and go to Los Angeles without a second thought. So she did. I mean, I did.

  Starting Over was network television’s first daytime reality drama. It placed six women of different ages and backgrounds in a house and offered them support for addressing one major challenge in their lives. Each woman was assigned a life coach. The coach, with the support of a therapist, engaged the woman in a series of coaching exercises and soul-stirring conversations as the catalyst for change. As the woman moved through the various challenges, she became more self-aware, self-assured, and selfactualized. After six to eight weeks in the house, she received a makeover to celebrate her new lease on life and then graduated, to be replaced by another woman who would walk through the process. As a life coach on Starting Over, I encountered every one of my issues with a different name and a different face, clothed in a different set of circumstances. I encountered my daddy issues, my mommy issues, the issue of diminished self-worth and self-value. I saw how I had denied myself, abused myself, and punished myself. The good news was, I was able to recognize my issues and address them with the women head-on and authentically. The adage “we teach what we need to learn” came alive in a very clear way for me. The not-so-good news was that I was doing this work on national television, before hundreds of thousands of people, when I hadn’t quite sharpened my skills. This meant that I had to carefully navigate and sometimes challenge the line between entertaining the audience and supporting the women. I didn’t always show up in the most loving way. At least that was the way it felt to me.