Everything I had learned and had not learned, everything I believed about myself or had ever been taught about myself, had come alive in my life. It contradicted everything Balé had told me. How could I build character while believing I was worthless? How could I build a life while believing I was unworthy? How could I take care of myself when I didn’t have a man? When things got really rough, it didn’t matter that I was a priest. Beneath all of the ceremony, and all of the knowledge I had gained from the books, there was a frightened, wounded little girl named Rhonda. She was in total control of my life, and Iyanla, who had yet to find an identity, didn’t have a clue about what to do next.
Yes, I prayed. But I was really begging God to help me. I was not communing with the divine power within me. I was asking a big God out there to save me from myself, like He had saved me from Grandma. God cannot help you unless you are very clear about what it is that you want. God will not help you if you do not believe that you are worthy of the help. Yes, I was meditating. But when you live in fear, meditation becomes an opportunity for your mind to play tricks on you. You get momentary glimpses of what could be. However, since you don’t believe in yourself because you do not understand your own power, you dismiss the insights you gain through meditation. Besides that, I was meditating about my problems rather than meditating on the solution. Balé had gone to Africa for an extended visit. I was trying to figure out what he would say to me, but I was so frightened and confused, I couldn’t think. One day, as I was staring out of the window, I heard his voice. What do you want to do?
I was coming down the stairs, headed toward the kitchen to make coffee. I’d never stopped my morning ritual, although Nett was gone. I had been praying, asking God to give me a sign that I would be okay. Singer Barry White was being interviewed on the radio. His booming voice filled the kitchen. Just as I hit the bottom step, Barry said, “You’ve got to have faith!” I stood stark still. It was as if he were speaking directly to me. “You’ve got to take the good times and the bad times. You’ve got to be willing to do it for free. If you have the desire and the skill, and you never allow yourself to believe in failure, you’re gonna make it. You have to make it.” I knew that was my message from God. I didn’t know what to do about it, but I knew it was for me.
The day before the marshal was scheduled to remove me and my property from the house, I moved into a friend’s basement. I was mortified, but grateful. Nisa, the cat, and I lived in that basement for eight months. During that time, I did everything in my power to get as clear as I could. I worked with the list Balé had given me. I studied everything I could get my hands on. I prayed, and most of all, I worked on myself. I examined every motive, every intention, every choice I made, no matter how insignificant it seemed. I was walking down the street one day when I saw a sign that said “Abundance” hanging in the window of a building. Beneath the word was a date and time. I went into the building, not knowing it was a Unity Church, to inquire about the sign.
“What does that sign mean?” There was a young woman behind the counter in a room that served as a bookstore.
“We are offering a workshop that teaches you how to create an abundance of good things in your life.”
“God knows I need some good things to happen to me. How much does it cost?”
“We begin tomorrow night at 7:00 P.M. and continue through Sunday night at 7:00 P.M. The commitment to take the workshop is $450.”
My heart sank. I had about $18, but I asked if she could tell me anything about the workshop. The woman took me into a small room, and we talked for about twenty minutes. She asked if I was interested.
“I am very interested. I think this is exactly what I need right now, but I don’t have the money.”
“Do you want to take the workshop?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Well, make a decision and a commitment. Everything you need will be provided.”
“I’ll think about it. Can I call you?” She gave me her card. As I was leaving, she repeated, “Make a commitment. Let me know by 4:00 P.M. tomorrow, because we start exactly at 7:00 P.M.”
I thought about nothing else for the rest of the day. When I got back home, I sat quietly thinking about how I could borrow the money. When nothing came to mind, I closed my eyes and just sat. What do you want to do? I want to take this workshop. Write a postdated check for the amount. Call the woman and tell her you will be there. I wrote the check and made the call.
“I am not authorized to accept a postdated check. Write the check. Date it for today, and be here at 7:00 tomorrow.” I did exactly what she said, without fear and without hesitation.
That workshop was the turning point of my life. It was there that I learned about the philosophy of Unity Village. It was there that I learned about the mind that existed in Christ and how that mind exists in us all. I learned about the power of the mind and its connection to God. I learned about the power of the subconscious mind and how it creates the experiences we live through. It was at this workshop I learned that I mattered. I learned to trust myself, and I learned the importance of telling the truth.
I was the only person of color in the workshop, standing in a circle of strangers, most of whom were older, wealthier, and more experienced at taking workshops. I had spent most of the time in the room feeling intimidated and out of place. The facilitator was in the middle of an exercise when someone in the group offered a very harsh criticism of him. Without warning, he turned to me and asked, “Well, what do you think?” Every eye in the room shifted to my face. When I didn’t respond, he yelled, “Honor yourself!” It was not something that I had ever considered.
“Honor yourself!” He was staring at me. He was screaming at me, “Admit what you feel. Learn to trust and to honor yourself as a divine and unique expression of God by telling the truth. Learn to love yourself enough to tell the truth exactly as you know it at any given moment. Do you love yourself?” I took too long to respond.
“Of course you don’t! How could you! No one ever told you that you were worthy of love. Well, I’m telling you that you are worthy, and that what you think matters. Do you believe that?”
“I’m not sure. I think so.”
“So are you going to tell me what you think about what that gentleman over there just said?”
“Say what I am thinking, out loud, in a room full of people? A room full of white people? You have got to be out of your mind!”
“No. You are out of your mind. You are in your ego. You are in your fears and your judgments. What I am asking you to do is to learn to trust yourself.” He wasn’t yelling anymore. “What do you think?”
It’s really rather hard to think when your brain is frying and your hair is falling off! “Well …”
“No wells!” He yelled at me. “The minute you say ‘well’ or ‘I don’t know,’ you are saying you don’t want to talk about it! You are here to talk. So talk! What do you think about what he just said?” I could feel all fifty eyeballs in the room on me. I could hear Grandma’s voice in the back of my mind: “If you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything at all.”
I could see Nett’s eyes darting across the room at me, giving me that look that said if I opened my mouth I would be swiftly put to death. I could smell my brain matter burning. I could hear Grandma, see Nett, and here was this big person, an adult, standing there and demanding an answer. The words escaped from my mouth before I could examine or censor them.
“I feel the same way. I don’t think you have to yell and scream at us to get your point across. We are not deaf. We have paid to be here, which means we are willing to learn. It is hard to learn when you are afraid.”
“Are you really afraid of me?” he asked gently.
“No, not really. I think I am more afraid of what you will say or do if I don’t give you the right answer.”
“What is the right answer?” He was pushing it a bit, but it felt good.
“I feel like the right answer is the one that pops i
nto your mind at the moment. The big question is how do you give that answer without hurting or offending the other person?”
He got down on his knees and looked me directly in the eye. “Honor what you feel by saying it the way you would want to hear it. When you say it honestly, with love, your job is over.”
The rest of the workshop went smoothly. On the last day of the workshop, we were informed that if we were not satisfied with what we had learned, the tuition would be refunded. They hadn’t cashed the checks! They were still in possession of the check I had given them on Thursday. I considered saying I wasn’t satisfied just to get the check back. Build your character, Iyanla! I decided against it. Instead, I left with an armful of books by Charles Filmore, the founder of the Unity movement. Two days after I completed the workshop, I received a telephone call from the radio station. Someone was going on vacation. If I could sit in, I would make $500. I asked for the money in advance. The check for the workshop and the books was covered in time.
After I completed the two weeks at the radio station, a client asked me if I would come to her job and talk to her students about self-esteem. She was an instructor in a job readiness program for women on welfare. She knew that I was once on welfare, and she knew that I had worked my way off welfare. It wouldn’t pay much, but she would see if she could arrange for me to come in once or twice a month. The weekly consulting job turned into a full-time position that got me out of the basement and into a house.
I started my first weekly ministry, the Transformation Station, which met every Sunday morning in the new house. I started with ten clients and students. Two years later, there was a line to get in. I had learned to combine the universal principles I was learning through Unity with the cultural principles I had learned in Yoruba. Going back to my Bible, and reading the other books Balé had given me, I had somehow found and could articulate the common thread: God is. God exists everywhere, all the time, in everything. Eric Butterworth, a Unity teacher, wrote, “We are an eachness in the Allness of God.” I had learned, understood, and believed that God existed in me. The essence and energy of God are expressed as me. By that time, I had also been introduced to and studied A Course in Miracles. The Course teaches about the power of love, also about the presence of the ego, which keeps us separate from and unable to recognize God’s love in each other. It was the teachings of Unity, The Course, and a metaphysical understanding of the teachings of the Bible that helped me to build Iyanla’s character. What I had not yet done was learn how to love myself. I knew what the books said, but I was still having trouble putting it into practice. I needed a man to help me do that.
He wasn’t married. He was living with someone. He was gorgeous. He was aloof. He would say one thing and do another. Before long, I found myself doing with him what I had done in the past. I was trying to make him change his mind. I was sleeping with a man who was not giving me all that I wanted and needed. And I was using a relationship as the barometer by which I measured my success. When we were on, I was on. When he didn’t call or come over, I felt like everything was falling apart. He brought up all of my worth issues, my abandonment issues, and he helped me to see that I was still looking for love “out there.” Once I realized what I was doing, I didn’t have the strength or courage to stop. I kept seeing him for more than a year before I remembered the list. What do you want? I want a man who is willing to be seen with me in public. What is your greatest fear? That I will never find a man to love me. What is your greatest weakness? Needing someone to love me. Why? Because I don’t love myself. Why? Because I’m not good enough. Why? Because that is what I have been told.
Each time I worked with the list, new questions and deeper insights emerged. I never said a word to my male friend. I just stopped calling. So did he. When he did call, months later, I was well on my way to learning “I am the love I seek.”
While working with the women in the program, I had developed a small pamphlet for them. It was a workbook, something they could hold onto when they left the program. Most of it came from the journals I had kept over the years. It revealed the lessons I had learned through many painful experiences. It was an analysis of the things I had done to create the chaos and drama I had experienced in my life. With each new class that entered, I added more to the book. I soon had a forty-page book that I wanted to get published. A friend introduced me to someone in the publishing field who would help me self-publish the book. Self-publishing takes money. I had none. The only thing I had was a commitment to get the book published.
A small business owner who had heard about my ministry and my work said that he would be willing to finance the book. A member of the ministry designed the cover. It took about six weeks. The day the books were delivered to my house, I cried. Tapping the Power Within: A Path to Self-Empowerment for Black Women was my first baby. It was a beautiful baby that I sold out of shopping bags to bookstores throughout the city. Gemmia and I made a list of bookstores around the country. When the telephone was working, we solicited orders. Soon I was selling between one hundred and two hundred books a week to stores as far away as Dallas. As the news about the book spread, people began calling me.
I started writing letters to literary agents and publishers, asking if they would like to publish the book. I remembered a woman I had worked with at Doubleday some fifteen years earlier. When someone told me that she was a literary agent, I wrote to her. She responded by saying she would not be taking on any new clients for at least a year. Since everyone else had already said no, and realizing that patience is a part of character building, I decided to wait.
I kept the ministry going and started doing speaking engagements at other job training programs. Working with my list, I realized that if there is something you want that does not exist, you could create it. I started writing to clubs, organizations, and corporations asking if I could come to speak to their students, members, and employees. I had a computer a friend had given me that had no printer. I would type the letter at home, take the disk to Kinko’s, and print the letter out. There were many times when I would find a typographical error after I had printed the letter. I would have to return to the copy center and pay for another printout. The carfare was wreaking havoc on my budget. I put my request for a car into the universe.
Without my having said a word to anyone, a member of the ministry called to tell me she knew a man who could help me get a car. She gave me his name and telephone number. I didn’t call because I knew my credit rating was poor. I had not paid for my Fingerhut towels, I had a defaulted student loan, and my utility bills were seldom paid on time. I decided I would have to save up enough money to buy a used car. The universe had other plans.
Several weeks later, the woman called to ask me if I had gone to see about the car. I told her no, but I didn’t tell her why.
“If you have bad credit, he can still help you. You really should call him.” I did. Gemmia and I went over to the lot and I found a beautiful gray Honda with my name written all over it.
“How much can you put down?” the salesman asked. Before I could answer, he said, “I’ll be right back.”
I was sitting in the salesman’s office with Gemmia. She is not just my daughter and best friend, she is the voice of reason. “I don’t have any money. What should I do?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Ask him if you can pay it off later.” The salesman was back.
“I’m having them clean the car up. How much can you give me today? Do you have insurance? I have a guy who can help you out. I’ll be right back.”
“Oh my God! What am I gonna do? I have to pee. When he comes back, tell him I went to pee.”
“I’m not going to tell him that,” Gemmia said, shaking her head and laughing. I was freezing. That always happens to me when I get nervous. I sat my cold butt on the cold toilet seat, never thinking it would be a spiritual experience. A voice filled the bathroom. Write him a check for nine hundred dollars. I was so nervous I answered out loud.
“I don’t have nine hundred dollars!” I was screaming at myself.
God has nine hundred dollars.
“But if the check bounces, God is not going to jail. I am.”
Offer him nine hundred dollars and trust God to do the rest.
I walked back to where Gemmia was sitting. The salesman rushed back in, sat down, stood up, leaned over the desk and said, “Write me a check for nine hundred dollars, and I’ll guarantee it.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that we will put a guarantee on the check so that if it doesn’t clear, we will have access to your account to get the money anytime it shows up.” I wrote the check.
When the insurance broker arrived, he asked for two checks, one for $75, another for $250. He explained that it would be at least two weeks before either check was cashed, because they had to be processed through the home office in Kansas.
I drove my car home and went to bed. The next morning I crept over to the window and peered through the curtains.
“Gemmia! Gemmia!” I was screaming and jumping up and down. “It’s still there! I have a car!” Gemmia and I did a little jig around the room. We jumped in the car and drove around the city delivering books. When we returned home, I found a check in the mail for $1,225. It was a deposit for a speaking engagement that wasn’t scheduled for two more months! I shared the story with the ministry the following Sunday. Together, we all celebrated.
Yesterday, I Cried Page 26