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

by Vanzant, Iyanla

  The second clue was that all of the producers had already been hired without the consultation I had requested and expected based on our many conversations. The problem was that several of the producers could not pronounce my name and only one of the six had ever read one of my books. Somebody shut the front door! This show was supposed to be based on my books! How was that going to happen if the producers had no idea what was in those books? No problem! I called Gemmia and instructed her to ship me six sets of all of my books and a variety of my audio tapes. I went office to office and presented each producer with a set of my work, encouraging them to become familiar with my language and style. They seemed grateful.

  Another challenge was that of the six producers, only one was an African American. Of the remaining five, only one was older than me. I wasn’t sure if they knew anything at all about life as I saw it and had lived it. I knew that Bill Geddie, a 40-or 50-something white male, had no clue about my reality, and Mindy had spent most of her career in the newsroom. Something was incongruent with the original discussions that we had, but I didn’t know how to address it. So I didn’t.

  My office and dressing room quickly became my sanctuary. There, with Jeff my assistant, Channel my hairdresser, and Lydia, a dear friend I hired to be my audience eyes and ears, I would retreat each day to discuss, eat, and pray. All the important work took place in the production offices—the “big house” as we called it—where the production meetings were held in Mindy’s office or in the conference room. It didn’t take me long to figure out that prior to most meetings, Bill and Mindy had already met. Their job at the meetings was to get me to agree to their decisions. Sure, they asked for my opinion, and of course they solicited input from the producers, but in the end, Bill’s best idea always won. My job was to read the teleprompter to deliver the message. It was nothing like I’d imagined.

  I was constantly reminded that daytime television was geared for housewives in Middle America, rather than the urban viewers and readers who had heretofore been my primary audience.

  The women who watched daytime television wanted to see makeovers, learn about parenting issues, and have their secret questions about relationships answered. They wanted to escape. They did not want to watch me solve problems specific to the African American community. This was my opportunity to cross over to a much larger and more lucrative audience. There were those words again, cross over. I thought I had already done that. I was confused.

  Bill and Mindy assured me that if I gave the show one season according to their formula, by Season Two, I could start introducing the subjects I had written about. My show needed experts so that I didn’t come across as a know-it-all. We couldn’t do an entire show on one topic, they said. Too difficult to hold the audience’s attention. We needed a magazine—two big topics and two small topics—to keep people tuned in. “Appointment viewers.” That’s what we wanted, and we had one season to get them hooked. We would not be showing my books on television. People might think I was being too black. We didn’t want that at all.

  I was groomed for daytime television by the industry’s best speech coach. After years of speaking publicly to thousands of people at a time, on the first day of my show, I froze. I talked too loud. I laughed too much. I was uncomfortable in my clothes, and I kept forgetting to look in the teleprompter. It was a mess!I was a mess! After the show, Barbara Walters gave me a good talking-to. She was sweet about it, but she gave me some very clear instructions about what I was never to do again. She advised me on how to keep myself calm and focused, and what to say even if I forgot to look in the teleprompter. I took everything she said to heart and put it into practice the very next day.

  Unfortunately, according to the coach, I was still way off the mark—still too loud and unsure. He advised me to say things a certain way. He gave me tips on how to stand and which way to look. He said it was all about the camera and making myself believable. It took about three sessions before I realized that it was about changing who I was into who they wanted me to be. By then, I was convinced that I didn’t know anything and that I was destined to fail. Gemmia was with me in New York that first week, and she could sense my fear. She kept saying, “Just be you and do you. If they don’t like it, you can come home to your life.”

  Her words made sense, but she had no idea how much they disturbed me. I couldn’t tell her that I no longer had a clear concept of who I was. I couldn’t tell her that I felt like I was drowning in a glassful of water. I didn’t dare speak that to anyone. There was too much riding on this venture. Too many people had put their hopes and dreams on my success. I was willing to do whatever it took to make the show a success, even if that meant following Bill and Mindy’s exact orders. It wasn’t just difficult. It was, painful. But it was, I thought, absolutely necessary. Going home every weekend was just another reminder of how lost I actually felt.

  Looking back, there were some bright spots on the Iyanla show. My proudest moments were the shows I did with Deepak Chopra, Dr. Wayne Dyer, Marianne Williamson, and Dr. Michael Eric Dyson. These shows by far overshadowed the many makeovers and cooking shows I had to do. But I still shudder to think that I agreed to seat Dr. Dyer in the audience rather than on the stage. They told me it was to make him seem more approachable. Later, I discovered that one of the network executives didn’t like him. The bright spots were often dimmed like that by the nastiness going on behind the scenes.

  Although it has been almost a decade since Iyanla ended, I still remember the day Bill Geddie spit on me. He didn’t actually spit saliva, but he might as well have. I had done a show about mothers losing control of their children. I had a real in-your-face, Iyanla-style talk with one mother. Although she got the point and seemed to respond, Bill decided that I had attacked her. I assured him that I had not. “Please trust my instincts,” I said.

  Standing over me, cigar in hand, he whispered in the hissing way he had: “That’s just it. I don’t trust your instincts. They seem sort of off to me.”

  It was like spit in my face, and it was all I could do to hold myself together. The part of me that responded was not the fighting girl from Brooklyn who didn’t take mess from any body; apparently, she had left the building. The figure who emerged was the broken teenager who desperately wanted to prove that she was good enough to be on television, that she was worthy of all she had accomplished. The Brooklyn fighter would have had a few choice words for Mr. Geddie. The broken teenager barely made it to the bathroom before she wept her heart out.

  Why couldn’t I stand up for myself? Why couldn’t I stand for what I knew to be true about me and within me? Why? Because I had never been taught how to do it— that’s why. Because I had never, not once in my life, been told that I had a right to stand in my power, to affirm my knowing and, to be proud of the gift God had given me. The gift of seeing and hearing beyond the physical world that was the undergirding of all of my work.

  Every ugly thing that had ever been said to me, every vicious thing that had ever been done to me, every hurt I had ever experienced rose to the surface, and I cried every tear I had ever swallowed in my entire life. It was a purging to prepare me for who I was becoming. Unfortunately, in that moment I didn’t know that, so I still felt like a wounded victim. Lydia, who had never seen me cry, went into an angry panic. Channel cried with me. Jeff, who really would have liked to punch Bill out, sat down and prayed instead. When I was able to pull myself together, I knew that something had to change. I couldn’t tell Gemmia, because she would lose it and possibly make a scene. My husband was not in the habit of defending me. I couldn’t walk out of the show for fear of being sued. Looming over my head was a million-dollar debt to the IRS that I was paying at the rate of $30,000 per month. Let me be perfectly clear: I needed my job. Yet I understood that if I didn’t get some help and support really soon, I would never make it through the season.

  The day after the Bill Geddie meltdown, I hired Steve to coach me—Steve Hardison, a brilliant man who is extraordinarily sensi
tive and downright psychic, although he would never represent himself as such. We had met during our master’s program in spiritual studies at the University of Santa Monica. Steve could see directly into my heart. I flew him to New York to get the lay of the land.

  Bill was extremely suspicious of the tall, good-looking white guy who wanted to follow me around for two days. I explained that Steve was my coach and that he was there to help me adjust to the world of television. Within the firm boundaries Bill set, Steve talked to everyone he could and got familiar with the day-to-day operation of the show. Before he returned to his home in Mesa, he gave me his impressions and outlined our work together. This is what he said:

  “Iyanla, these people do not know who you are. They do not know, because you have not told them. Most of them respect you and they respect work you did on Oprah, but they do not know your vision. If this show is going to work, you have to let them know who you are, get them enrolled in your vision, and make this process life-giving for you, or you might as well walk away. If this process does not give you life, it will steal your life, and nothing is worth that.”

  Over the course of three months, Steve coached me on how to stand up for myself within myself, and how to take a powerful stand on my vision for the Iyanla show. It was one of the most powerful experiences of my life. It is the reason the Iyanla show did not live beyond Season One.

  During the third week of filming, the 9/11 tragedy destroyed the World Trade Center. We didn’t tape for three days. I had some ideas about what we could do to support people through the tragedy, but neither Bill Geddie nor the network executives thought much of my ideas. Only after I spoke to Ms. Walters— which I did only when something was really important—was it agreed that I could go into the street and talk to people. It was a week after the bombing had occurred, and the state of the city made it difficult to get a studio audience. People were afraid to come into New York, and those who did come weren’t there to attend a TV taping. It was then that the decision was made to hire actors to fill the audience. No one told me about the decision. I found out purely by accident when a producer let it slip that the crazy guy in the front row should not be hired back. I didn’t get suspicious until a month had passed and I kept seeing the same people in the audience. When I asked about why it was still going on, I was told it was necessary to diversify the audience, because my core audience was black. Not only were they black, but they had a tendency to come dressed in African clothes, with the large head wraps. We needed to be careful not to give the impression that the Iyanla show was a “black” show. I was floored.

  I had been working with Steve about a month when I had my second deadly encounter with Bill Geddie. After some persuasive insistence on my part and a little support from Mindy, it had been agreed that we would do a series of shows based on the principles in my book In the Meantime. These once-a-week shows would focus on relationship issues, and I would bring in an expert on the topic so it didn’t appear that I was trying to do and know everything. I was so excited about finally using my own work on the show, I missed the point that I myself was an expert on the principles of healthy relationships—I didn’t always live it but I knew all about it and that is what mattered for television. It was all the other the stuff they had me doing that was beyond my expertise. In any event, I flew in an African American husband-and-wife team from Michigan whom I had worked with before. The show went well, but like everything else, since there was no clear vision, it needed to be tweaked. That was the mandate of the production meeting where whole the team would be present, the meeting where Bill Geddie reigned supreme.

  The meeting got off to a good start. The producer was enthusiastic as we discussed how to make the Meantime show more exciting. The ideas were flowing, and we were just about ready to settle on a plan when Bill dropped a bombshell. He was the only one in the room who was not seated. Instead, he walked around the table, offering his point of view here and there. He was walking up behind me, just about to pass me, when he turned and said:

  “We’re going to change the experts.”

  “Why?” I asked. “That’s not what we had discussed previously.”

  “Well, I think we need a little more variety.”

  “Okay, but you said I could choose the experts since I would be working with them.”

  “Yeah, but those experts didn’t really work.”

  Now I was getting a little pissed. I knew this couple and their work. In addition, they brought some diversity to the stage.

  “Why didn’t they work?” I turned to the producer. “Did you think they worked?” Unfortunately, that producer, like all of the producers, she remained mute. I did not.

  “Bill, you seem to forget that I am the one who has to work with these people, and I still haven’t heard why you think they didn’t work.” I had him backed into a corner and he had to tell the truth.

  “I don’t like them. They are boring, and they sound like you with all of their psychobabble. We need to get somebody else, that’s it.”

  The comment moved through the room like a giant vacuum cleaner, sucking all of the air out of the producers. Thanks to Steve’s coaching, the wounded teenager in my consciousness didn’t even react. Instead, the fighting Brooklyn girl was alive and kicking. I had a vision for the In the Meantime shows. There was a part of me that was ready and willing to stand up for that vision.

  “Bill, this really isn’t about what you want, it’s about what works for the show. I think this team of experts works, and I want to move forward with them.”

  He had made it all the way around the table again and was almost behind me as I spoke. Instead of walking on, he leaned over me, all six feet, four inches of him. He leaned over me and hissed:

  “Let me tell you how this works. I am the executive producer. I am the one who gets to say who and what goes on this show, and I am saying that I don’t want them back.”

  Looking up into the face of the large white male leaning over me as he sputtered his command, I wasn’t sure what was happening, but I can now identify it as a Middle Passage experience. It was a fight for survival. This was another man using his size and position to bully me into doing what he wanted me to do. There was a part of me that wanted to scream and claw his eyes out. Another part of me knew that my life as the host of a nationally syndicated talk show was in danger. Was I going to sacrifice myself to please him? Or was I going to take a stand?

  It was then that I realized something deep inside of me had shifted and been healed.

  Very often we claim to know something. We get an idea about what to do or not do, yet, for some reason our behavior doesn’t change. At times, we just can’t seem to do what we know. This is known as mental healing. Something has shifted in your thinking, but it has not reach the other levels of your being—the heart and the spirit. Mental healing occurs quite often, and it is not a complete healing. It is not enough to shift or change the long-standing influence of an inherited pathology or way of being. In order to change your response to a pathological form of behavior, healing must take place on three levels of being—intellectual, emotional, and spiritual. Not until this level of healing has occurred will your behavior change. I had been healed!

  In the back of my mind, I could hear Steve’s voice: If this does not give you life, it will steal your life. My voice in the production of the show was the only way my vision could or would have life. The vision was the most important thing in that moment. The air was thick with silence. I knew I needed to back down, but I also knew I needed to stand up for myself. Scanning the room, I saw ten deer in headlights. Mindy, next to me, was fidgeting with paper. I was on my own. This was my flight to freedom!

  In that moment, another part of me came to life. A real live wise woman, a warrior woman, sprang to life within me. She wasn’t a soldier or street fighter engaging in a battle just to stay alive. Oh no! She was a well-trained and majestic warrior ready to do battle to advance my total well-being. I could feel her energy, power, and conf
idence move up my spine. Her presence slowed my heartbeat to a normal pace and calmed the shaking in my body. When she spoke, it was a shock to me and everyone else in the room.

  “I’ll tell you what, Bill. If you want another team of experts, you work with them, because I won’t.”

  “Oh, so now you want to sabotage the show?”

  “No. I don’t want to sabotage the show. I want to honor my word to the experts I have chosen, and I want to hold you to your word, because you said I could choose them.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you what; we just won’t do the shows any more. We will drop the In the Meantime shows.”

  Oh, no! You can’t do that! I’m sorry! Please don’t do that! I recognized that internal voice as the not-good-enough part of me. The part of me that was ever ready to give up and give in. The part of me that was not willing to stand up for what mattered to me. The part of me that had done the wrong thing again, and now some man was angry with me. The part of me that was about to die a natural death.

  The wise woman spoke again. “That’s fine with me, because at the end of the day, it is my name on the wall. This is the Iyanla show, and there must be some part of Iyanla in the show.”

  How does a room full of women recover from the attack of a powerful man? Let me tell you, it ain’t easy! Mindy finally broke the silence by introducing another topic. Bill, who was now beetred, left the room. It was done, but it wasn’t over.

  I went across the street to my sanctuary. This time it was not the weeping little girl who shared her experience with Jeff and Lydia. The wise warrior woman explained what had occurred and what she planned to do about it. She asked Jeff to pray with her.

  While he was praying, the wise woman called the executive in charge of the show at the Buena Vista offices. “I will not work with Bill Geddie. He needs to be removed from this production. Working with him would be like smiling in the face of the man who raped me as a child, and I refuse to do it.”