Over the years, I had fought with myself to move beyond the bad habits, the negative beliefs, and the consuming fear that I had lived with all my life. This was the identity that Rhonda nurtured in her bosom. These were the things that she knew so well. But these things did not work for Iyanla. Too many I can’ts, too many don’t knows, too much fear and hesitation. Too much anger and shame that resulted in too much guilt. Iyanla did not doubt God or the process of life. I had no need to be rescued, no need to be taken care of, so why was I crying and feeling unworthy. What was happening?
There were things that I wanted to say, needed to say for myself, but for some reason the words were stuck in my throat. I was swallowing my truth because I was afraid to upset people. I was people pleasing because I was afraid to deal with confrontation. The most disturbing part of it all was the financial chaos and personal crisis that continued to rear their ugly heads at the most inopportune moments. It was annoying! I had exchanged a welfare check for a royalty check. I had exchanged gossip for self-judgment. It was getting tired! I thought I was finished with this stuff! And perhaps Iyanla was. But Rhonda wasn’t.
The water had gotten cold again, and I hadn’t even scratched the surface. It was truth-telling time, and I was more than willing. “Cleanse,” I thought. “Cleanse and get clear. Get clear and grow.” I was someplace else in my mind when my husband knocked at the door. “Are you okay in there?” He was used to me now and knew better than to open the door when I was processing. To put him at ease and to remind myself, I responded, “I’m blessed.”
Even when it seems that your life is falling apart, there is divine restoration going on. Karen and I had built my dreams into a solid structure, brick by brick and book by book. Which was why this was so very, very hard. Something had happened along the way, things no longer felt good. We were arguing rather than celebrating. Things were being said that made me very uneasy. I had seen, and now felt, some things about Karen that let me know that the marriage between us was falling apart. Our time together was quickly coming to an end. The truth is that I had known it for about a year. But I owed her. But she saved me when I was down and out. But she took care of me. What would I do without her? How could I fire someone who had been so good to me? This was Rhonda’s stuff!
Iyanla believed that Karen was her employee. She got paid to do a job, and that was all that was owed. Iyanla was grateful and loyal, but not beholding. Rhonda, however, had mixed business with friendship, and the business was going sour. Rhonda felt loyal to the patterns that she and Karen had established. Rhonda was also afraid. She was afraid of losing love and someone she loved. It was right there that the trains collided: Iyanla knew one thing; Rhonda believed another. Knowing and believing are not the same. When you know one thing and believe another, you experience conflict.
The water was just right. Hot enough to bring the crap to the surface and give me another hour of stillness. Rhonda needed healing. Healing takes place from the inside out. I had to go to the depths of my memory, the core of my soul, and make peace with what I had created. That’s right, I created it. Whenever we don’t do what we need to do, for whatever reason, we create crap. I once thought that if I prayed enough, meditated long enough, and demonstrated enough faith, things would work themselves out. I had thought I could live with the pangs of something being not quite right. Thank God I had grown enough to be unable to excuse away any level of dishonesty. Dishonesty was not a part of Iyanla’s nature, the nature I had acquired with the name. Lying still in the water, I remembered how I had acquired my name.
There was a lot of activity at Balé’s house when I arrived. A group of women were in one room, sitting on the floor, singing and pounding herbs in a large metal bowl. Several men were sitting in another room, laughing and talking. Balé was in his usual place, the kitchen. As always, he was glad to see me. He instructed me to take a seat in a room upstairs, while he continued his therapy. I sat listening for hours as the people on the first floor sang and talked and laughed. Each time I got up to go to the bathroom, I would peer over the railing, trying to see what was going on. I could hear. I could smell. But I could not see.
I had known Balé, my spiritual mentor and godfather, since I was nine years old. Sitting across the dinner table from him now, I felt as though I was seeing him for the first time. Although we had spoken occasionally, this was the first time I had seen Balé in fifteen years, and he had changed. So had I. Still, this man knew me. He knew my family; he knew my history. He knew Rhonda and he knew the person I was destined to be. He was my father figure. The father I had always wanted to love and approve of me. When I was a teenager, he had managed the dance troupe I belonged to. Many people, including my father, misread him. They thought he was an older guy taking advantage of a group of young girls. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
Throughout my life, Balé’s had guided me through the critical periods. He kept me and my friends away from the “bad boys.” He had taught us what it meant to be young African-American women. In fact, he bought the first piece of African cloth I owned. I made two skirts with it. One for myself, and one for Balé’s younger sister. She was my best friend. She was the one who pawned her wedding ring to help me bail my husband out of jail. I had spent most of my teenage Thanksgivings at their house. When I was pregnant with my first child, Balé and his sister gave me a baby shower. Looking at him now, I realized how much I had missed him and how much he had influenced my life.
Balé is a Yoruba priest. He had been initiated when I was still a teenager. After his initiation, he left New York. He lived in Africa for a while and then relocated to Florida. I had recently discovered, purely by accident, that he was now living in New Jersey. When I called him, we were both thrilled to hear each other’s voices. We wanted to celebrate our reunion. Now I was sitting in his house and trying to catch up on our individual histories. He had heard that I was living in Philadelphia, practicing law. He knew that my first husband and I were no longer together, that my second husband had died, and that I had been initiated as a Yoruba priestess. Now he wanted to know everything else.
I now remembered that the feeling I had sitting in Balé’s house on that day had been just like being at Grandma’s house. I had been banished to a room by myself. I could smell food being prepared, but I dared not ask for anything to eat. I was starving. I could hear people having a good time, but I was not being allowed to join in. The longer I sat, the angrier I became. The angrier I became, the more frustrated I became with my inability to express my anger. By the time my mind finished bouncing from anger to frustration, frustration to rejection, rejection to starvation, I had one doozie of a headache. I was just about to gather my things and head for the front door when Balé called me. Only then did I notice that the house was silent. All the people were gone.
“I know you must be hungry. Did you think I wasn’t going to feed my baby? Come. Eat.”
Balé had set the table just for me. He had placed an enormous portion of Brazilian chicken and rice on a china plate. He talked from the kitchen as I devoured the food.
“Don’t be so fast to jump to conclusions. You have never seen this day. You have never seen the beauty this day holds. Just because it rained yesterday and the ground is flooded, that does not mean you are going to get wet today.”
I dropped my fork in midair. Damn! Damn! Damn! He had been in my head again. My appetite disappeared.
“Do you know what I am talking about?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“You have been through a lot. I know you have made some mistakes. But I also know that nothing you have done has been because you are a mean or malicious person. Most of what you have done has been what you were taught to do. Do you know that you are not a bad person?” The smell of the food on the table was making me sick.
“Sometimes I think I almost have myself convinced. Then I will do something, somebody will criticize me, and then I’m not so sure anymore.”
“You are not a
bad person, but you have placed yourself in bad situations. If you could be anything in the world—I mean any animal, food, fruit, mineral, or person—who or what would you be?”
I really had to think about it. At first I was trying to think of the “right” answer, the answer that would most impress Balé. Realizing how impossible that would be, I began to think of what would be most useful to the world: What would most people like or find useful? My criteria: useful, likable, and abundant. I did not want to be a rare thing or an unfamiliar thing.
“There is no right answer,” Balé said. I had already figured that part of it out.
“A chicken. I’d like to be a chicken,” I said. Of course he asked the reason.
“Everybody likes chicken. Chickens are very useful and they are abundant. They are rugged. And they can survive almost anywhere.” I looked down at my plate and added, “Chickens give people the opportunity to be creative.”
Balé stared at me for a second, then said, “Me, I want to be a cool, clear glass of water. I want to be able to see out into the world with no obstructions. And I want to live in such a way that nothing can be hidden.”
I knew where he was going.
“You know, Adeyemi is a good man. He has always worked and done so much for the community. But he has already dragged your name through the mud once. I’m sure those were not his intentions, but that is what happened. Please do not allow that to happen to you again. You are a different person now than you were then.”
This was getting to be pretty scary. I had just spent two days in Albany with Adeyemi. He worked in Albany during the week and went home to Brooklyn and his wife on the weekends. I knew something was wrong when he greeted me at the train station, but we made it through the weekend without incident. The morning I was to leave, he told me that we should not see each other anymore. He said he realized that he was not giving his marriage a fair try. Besides that, his wife was beginning to question him about me. I was furious. I told him that the marriage was not going to work because he had only gone back to ease his guilt. I told him that if he thought I was going to sit around and wait for him, he was crazy. And if he didn’t want to be with me, that was fine by me! I left his apartment, vowing never to see him again. I called him the moment I got home. It was then that he told me he was moving his family to Atlanta.
I knew I had to stop seeing Adeyemi, but I couldn’t seem to do it. He was, after all, the first man who ever held my hand. I tried to justify my actions by telling myself that he and his wife were separated and therefore he was fair game. That didn’t explain away the fact that he was living with her in Brooklyn, and I was living in Philadelphia. It was wrong, and I knew it was wrong. But I was not ready to admit it. I didn’t say a word to Balé. I stared into space, trying not to cry. Suddenly, I could see Nett as clearly as if she were sitting across the table from me. She picked up her cup, took a sip, and without blinking, said to me, “If a man is married and you are not, you are sleeping with a married man. It doesn’t matter if he hasn’t seen his wife in fifty years, or if he lives on one side of the world and she on another. If he is married and you are not, you are asking for trouble.” Then she was gone. I swore to myself I was never coming back to this house.
Balé removed my plate from the table and told me to sit on the mat that he had spread out on the floor. Balé is a diviner. The process of divination for Yoruba people requires the use of sixteen cowrie shells. Once the shells have been consecrated with ceremony and prayer, a diviner will cast the shells to determine the answer to a question. The configuration of the shells when they fall reveals the answer. Balé blessed the cowries and began casting them. It’s like rolling dice; you just have to know what the numbers mean in order to receive the answer to your question.
Balé never revealed the nature of his question. I watched him throw and pick up the shells for about ten minutes. Then he got up and left the room. When he returned, he carried a book. He consulted the book, then began throwing the shells again. Suddenly, he stopped. Closing his eyes and leaning his head back against the wall, he sat still for several minutes. When his eyes flew open, I jumped. He picked up the shells again and cast them one last time. He was pleased. I could tell by the smile on his face.
“Are you ready for this?” he asked me. I had no idea what he was talking about.
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“If you are not ready, just say so. We can come back to it at a later time.”
Slightly pissed, I thought to myself, Why all the cloak and dagger? Either tell me what you are talking about, or don’t ask me to respond.
“Balé, I have no idea what you are talking about. How could I know if I am ready or not?”
“If you would stop being so snippy and take a deep breath, you would know that you are ready.” Now he was pissed. I did what he said.
“Yes, I am ready to pursue my destiny.” That was an interesting response, I thought to myself.
“Iyanla. Your name is Iyanla. It is really not a name at all. It is a title. It is a title of greatness. The translation of Iyanla is ‘great mother.’ Back home in Nigeria, the Iyanla is the king’s mother. She is a woman of great prominence and stature. She is the wise woman. She is the one all women look to and aspire to be, but cannot be. Iyanlas are ordained by birth. They come from God. It is God who has etched greatness into their souls. All of us want to be great. Iyanla is born that way. Her job in life is to remember her true identity. The ‘great mother’ teaches and guides the people. She heals the sick. It is even said in some circles that only the Iyanla can raise the living dead. Not the dead, but the living dead, because she knows the secrets of life and living. Iyanla is the proverbial Psalm 31 woman. I know you have not read Psalm 31, but you will.
“Iyanla is a woman of moral character and purity of heart. She is the one who is written about in Surah 19 of the Holy Qur’an. She is the essence of Ch’ien and the K’un of which the I Ching teaches. She is primal power. That which is light giving, active, and strong, because she is born of the Spirit. She is the receptivity of the earth that gives birth to all things new. Iyanla, the ‘great mother,’ is the grace, mercy, and goodness of God that resides in the hearts of all men. Her presence teaches about the goodness of God. She moves gracefully because she knows God. Those who know God do not pursue greatness. Those who know they are already great grow through the strength and grace of Iyanla. This is the potential, the purpose, that God has placed in your soul. My question is, Are you ready?”
My mouth was dry. My palms were sweating. My head was spinning. I could not open my mouth. Balé detected that I was about to throw up on his beautiful mat. “Put your head down. Breathe and put your head down.” Then he continued. “Build your character, Iyanla. Seek the truth and speak the truth. Learn all that you can about teaching and healing. Learn all that you can about mercy and grace. Learn all that you can about God, because God and the high Spirits of God are the only friends you have. People are going to challenge you. Iyanla is welcomed by all, but feared and despised by many. When you know, do not be afraid to say you know. When you do not know, say so. You will be shown what to do. You will be told what to say. Only if you build yourself on the strength of good character will you be able to receive the answers you need. Know who you are. You are no longer Rhonda. She is dead. You can no longer live the way Rhonda lived. The questions you must answer now for yourself are: Who are you? and What do you want to do?”
Balé made us a cup of tea. I was completely overwhelmed. Excited, but overwhelmed. Never in my life had anyone given me such hope. I would never have connected myself to any of the things he had said. Whether I was right or wrong, good or bad—these ideas were about as close as I had ever come to his description of me.
“How?” I kept asking him. “How am I supposed to do that? To become that?”
“You are that already. Your name is your nature.” Balé explained that he had asked for sixteen other names. He did not get a confirmation until he asked for Iyanl
a. Realizing that the excitement had made me bold, Balé listened patiently to my questions.
“Suppose you made a mistake? How do you know you didn’t make a mistake?”
“That is your fear talking. That is self-doubt and fear. How many mistakes have I made in the past?” We both knew the answer.
Again, I felt overwhelmed. Balé had asked me such simple questions. They were simple, yet profound. They were questions for which I had no answers. Who are you? What do you want to do? Are you ready? I had never taken the time to ask myself those questions. Balé gave me a list of things I needed to figure out for myself: What is your favorite color? Food? Song? Most valued possession? What is your greatest strength? Greatest weakness? Greatest fear? Best skill? Greatest mistake? Greatest accomplishment?
“Ask yourself why,” he said. “What is or was the energy behind each of these things in your life? What is the experience that brings you the greatest amount of joy? What is the one task that you are least fond of doing? Again, ask yourself why. If you were to die today, what is the one thing everyone who knows you would say about you? What would you want them to say? Why wouldn’t or couldn’t they say what you would want them to say?” I was taking notes.
“Once you have answered each of these questions, put your list away, then review it three months later, every three months for the rest of your life. That way you will always be in touch with yourself.”
We spent the rest of the evening talking about the requirements for being a priest and a person of good character. Balé emphasized that the person always comes first.
“You may want to be as spiritual as all get out, but you are a human being, prone to making mistakes. When you do make a mistake, only a good, solid character will help you move through it.”
That is what this day and this bath and these tears were about: building character and integrity. I was out of integrity. I was thinking things about someone without honestly sharing what I felt. I was talking to other people about the situation, which meant I mistrusted what I knew to be true. Somehow, I had forgotten that you must put your spiritual knowledge into practice all of the time. You have to tell the truth all of the time. You must declare your goal, state your intentions, ask for what you want, and remain true to yourself, all of the time. The minute you forget any one or all of those principles, the enemy will step in. When that happens, you have to work harder. The time had come for me to heal at a deeper level and get the lesson from another perspective. I may have simply scratched the surface. Or perhaps I had missed one tiny little detail. I did know enough to realize that what was showing up in my life was the answer. I now had to remember the question. I prayed.
Yesterday, I Cried Page 4