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Iyanla Vanzant on Being African-American, Woman, and Spiritual
Last year, my office moved and my Wall of Fame got safely stored in a cardboard box, and recently I decided that it's time to put it up again. I've found a new photo that I'm going to use to start my wall. It's a photo of Iyanla Vanzant. Iyanla (E-Yan-la) Vanzant is an inspirational woman. She was raped by an uncle at age 11 and by age 21 she had three children and a physically abusive husband. She suffered several black eyes, three fractured ribs, a broken jaw, a displaced uterus, and had attempted suicide. Worse than all of it, she says, was the loss of her personhood. One day in the welfare office, she overheard a caseworker say loudly, "You welfare mothers are a menace to society," and she became enraged. A thought popped into her head: "I'm outta here." It became her mantra. "I'm outta here." She enrolled in college without knowing how or why, and the people she needed seemed to just appear in her life. Three years later, after graduating summa cum laude, she said goodbye to welfare and landed a job that paid more than her former caseworker made! Four years after that, she got her law degree and became a public defender. Today, the Maryland resident is a vocal proponent for empowerment. She is also a Yoruba priestess, a counselor, public speaker, and author of three books that have received a very enthusiastic response from the African-American community. Her latest, The Value in the Valley (Simon and Schuster), is geared toward helping women claim their power as individuals. I was fortunate to be able to speak with Iyanla recently for The New Times. She has a voice like melted butter and speaks with a poised thoughtfulness that comes through in her writing and which undoubtedly inspires her readers to slay their dragons and accept themselves with loving gentleness. Rhonda: It seems that your writing and speaking have really struck a chord in the African-American community. Why do you think that is? Iyanla: Because no one else is saying it, and I'm not asking for anything else in return. I don't ask my readers or listeners for anything besides the admission price to come in. And I put the admission price for their lives squarely in their lap. But I also validate their experiences. There's no place else in this country that I know of that validates the experiences of African-American women. No place else that says, "You're not alone." Nobody else is speaking to our experience, therefore no one else is honoring who we are. Rhonda: In The Value in the Valley, it's almost like you're putting words and phrases on things that black women have experienced that they might not even have words for. For things that they... Iyanla: That they've been told don't make sense. Rhonda: Right. Iyanla: That they've been told don't matter. Rhonda: Right. Iyanla: That they've been told, they'll "get over." And while we're getting over it, we're dying. I don't know if the experience is the same for white women, but I'm not arrogant enough to speak to the experience of white women because I'm not white. Rhonda: One of the things that I was taken with about the book is that it is oriented toward African-American women, but you don't have to be black to read the book and say, "Uh, oh. She's talking about my life." Iyanla: And that may very well be true and I'm glad. I'm happy to hear that. But you can get the message from Gloria Steinem and Marianne Williamson and Wayne Dyer and Anthony Robbins, but it doesn't speak to our experience. You've got to remember that we're four hundred years behind you and it's only been legal for any woman—black or white—to know how to read for 103 years in this country. Rhonda: I didn't know that. Iyanla: Oh, yes. So you figure that it's only been legal for women to read for 103 years and African-American women are four hundred years behind you. Rhonda: I've been involved with the metaphysical community here in Seattle for a number of years and one thing I have noticed is that is seems that slowly more and more blacks are getting involved in metaphysics. But it's happening very slowly. Iyanla: Metaphysics are the only realm in our community where we're told that it doesn't matter what color you are; that God loves you, anyway. The reason that it's occurring more slowly is because it doesn't look like us. We are not used to living in the whole world. There are so many places where we have not been able to live until it's just dawning on us that it's okay for us to be there. But even more importantly—most importantly—is the fact that all aspects of our culture were denigrated. We were told that burning incense was no good. Now, all of a sudden, the European community has sanctioned that. Now they're burning candles and rubbing crystals and burning incense so now it's okay. They forgot that in the process of enslaving us that they denigrated our culture and our way of life and made us feel that it was bad and evil and no good. Rhonda: That must be so galling. Iyanla: Oh, yes it is. So now the majority of us are still trying to get to Jesus and don't want to know anything about our culture. That's why it's occurring so slowly. Rhonda: Someone said that part of your popularity is because you provide a link between members of the African-American community and their African roots. Iyanla: Right. Absolutely. As I've said, we've been told that to be African was to be godless and heathenistic, uncivilized, animals. Africans were animals. So now we have to learn that it's okay to be African; that God shines on Africans just like he does on French and German people. That's a four-hundred-year indoctrination that has to be reversed. And beyond the enslavement, was self-hatred. I was born in 1953 at a time when there were no African-Americans on television. Every magazine I opened up had white women and white men. White women drove cars, lived in nice houses. Donna Reed lived in a beautiful home. Penny in Sky King had long blonde pigtails. So where did I find my rightness as a black girl with broad lips, a big behind, and kinky hair? I didn't find my rightness until the late '60s, early '70s. But it was an external rightness. It was still my hair and my clothes and my dashiki. It wasn't the divinity in me through the presence of God. And for many African-Americans it is still an external rightness that we seek. And we still haven't intuited the divinity of our being. So what I talk about is your divinity. First, as a child of God, second as an expression of the divine feminine energy. (We've been taught about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Where's the Mother?) And third, as a child of color in this society it's been okay in this society to be everything but black. But now it's fashionable to be black. The blacker the better. Rhonda: That's the same thing that's being experienced in the gay community. Iyanla: Yes, but it's still external. Rhonda: It's because the mainstream community has said this is okay now. Iyanla: It's okay. It's acceptable. Rhonda: Instead of just knowing that it is without the larger society sanctioning it. Iyanla: Right. Rhonda: The story of your life reads like a lot of people's worst nightmare. Iyanla: Oh no, there's a whole bunch of stuff that's more nightmarish. I've never been addicted to drugs. I've never experienced any kind of physical ailment. I've never been physically incapacitated in any form whatsoever. I've never been homeless. I've never buried a child. What a blessing! Rhonda: That's a wonderful way of looking at it. I read about your life and I say to myself, "How terrible." But you're saying it's not. Iyanla: No. What a blessing that I don't have to sell my body on the street for five dollars to get a bag of crack because there's a demon existing in my bloodstream. What a blessing. What a blessing that all three children that I brought into this world are still walking the face of the earth. What a blessing. What a blessing that I've never had to take my children into a shelter or we've never had to sleep on the corner. We haven't really missed too many meals. We may not have had what we wanted, but we had something. What a blessing. Rhonda: You went from being on welfare... Iyanla: Confusion and lack of self-worth to the truth. Rhonda: ...and do you think that in doing that that you are the exception? Iyanla: Absolutely not. There are hundreds of thousands of black women, white women, black men, white men, who do it every day, but it's not controversial enough to make the news. Rhonda: But I mean as far as the "gumption" that you've shown. Do you think that that's something really special? Iyanla: No, because women are telling their stories, but they're just not being heard. I don't know why I was chosen to have my story heard. That isn't my business and I'm not going to question it. But women are telling their stories all of the time. I am simply the embodiment of hundreds of thousands of women's stories, and perhaps because I have better diction or a nicer hairdo the universe has selected me. But I in no way stand by myself. There are women everyday who rise up out of the projects. There are women everyday who battle and are victorious over the demons of addiction and abuse. Every single day. As we speak, some woman is checking into a rehabilitation center. Her story may never get told, so I have to tell it for her. Rhonda: Why did you write The Value in the Valley? Iyanla: I want to say, "Why not?" The Value in the Valley honors the experience of women, which we have heretofore been taught to be ashamed of. If you don't make it, if you're not the head of your class, if you don't have the million-dollar job with the expense account, you're considered nothingness. Our society honors two things: total despair and total greatness. But there's a cadre of people in-between despair and greatness, and nobody speaks to their experience. No one honors their victories and no one acknowledges their suffering. What my goal was in The Value in the Valley was to honor the experience of those people so that they would know that they are still valuable and that they're on a journey. Some of us make it quickly and some of us take our time, but God will meet you where you are on the journey. If you realize that God is the point. I mean, what's the point to all of this? For me, the point to all of this is to be able to acknowledge consciously, to recognize fully, and to embrace totally the presence of God in my being and in my life. That's the purpose of all of this. Rhonda: Because of the broader culture, I think so many of us are oriented toward, "When I get this relationship, I will be happy..." Iyanla: Or when I get this money. Rhonda: Right. Iyanla: Or when I get this car. Rhonda: Right. Iyanla: And we are never happy with who we are or where we are. We're always looking to yesterday or toward tomorrow, and we're never just in the now. In the now is where the blessing is. We're so busy doing that we forget to just be. Can you be happy, or do you always have to do something to make you happy? Can you be wealthy, or do you always have to have something to make you look wealthy? Rhonda: One of the things I liked that you mentioned in your book is the fact that 24 hours is broken into a light and a dark. A night and a day. And that's just a natural turning. Iyanla: Yes. Rhonda: We don't get the light and then just stop. The wheel keeps turning. Iyanla: But in this society, we're taught that as long as things aren't rosy, there's something wrong. We're not open to experience those hours of the darkness because in the dark hours we are asleep. There's something wrong with the dark: "It's dark. Time for bed. Close your eyes. Don't look at it. Don't see the darkness." Rhonda: Literally as well as figuratively. Iyanla: Yes. So the same way that the darkness in this society is shunned and ignored and feared, so is the power of the feminine energy. And it is most unfortunate because it is in the darkness when the feminine energy is at her highest point. It's in the darkness that the moon comes out. It's in the darkness of the womb that the human life is created. Iyanla Vanzant will be in Seattle to speak at the Women of Wisdom Conference on February 16 at Seattle Unity Church, 800 8th Avenue North in Seattle. For brochure, information, or tickets call (206) 622-8474, ext. 135.Iyanla's books, The Value in the Valley, Tapping the Power Within, and Acts of Faith may be found at your local bookstore. |
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few years ago, I created a "Wall of Fame" in my office.
On it, I posted pictures of people whose personal stories or
public personae inspired, impressed, or humored me. Folks like
Lucille Ball, Alfred Hitchcock, Barbara Walters and Hugh Downs,
Diane Sawyer, Gandhi, Lily Tomlin, Spike Lee, Whoopi Goldberg,
Steven Spielberg, Roseanne. If I needed a pick-me-up or some
inspiration, one glance at my wall would uplift me.