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

by Vanzant, Iyanla

  I let my housekeeper go to save money. That meant that I had to be home when Oluwa arrived from school. Most days I would send him off, go to Gemmia’s, and spend the day with her. On other days, as soon as he got home, we would go to Gemmia’s together. He and Niamoja did their homework with Gemmia’s help while I juiced and prepared her meals. This went on for weeks.

  One day Gemmia called me and told me I didn’t need to come over, she was going out. Out where? Just out, I have some things to do. I thought it was the beginning of her full recovery. The next day, before I could leave my house, Gemmia arrived. She looked good and she seemed to have a lot of energy. I was both shocked and pleasantly surprised. We spent a lovely morning together chatting before she dropped the bombshell. She had decided to begin chemotherapy. Her recent blood test indicated that she still had cancer in her body. She wanted to knock it out because she was moving.

  Moving where? She was selling her house and moving to Los Angeles. She wanted to study under Reverend Michael Beckwith and start her own business. If she did the chemo here, she could get the cancer under control, and she would find a doctor when she got to Los Angeles. She needed and wanted my support. “Well, of course, you have it,” I told her. I just didn’t understand why now.

  Gemmia told me that she had been thinking about it for a while, but she didn’t want to take Niamoja away from her father. She also didn’t think I would support her, because I needed her at Inner Visions. Her health challenge helped her to figure out that at 30 years old, she could no longer live my vision. She needed to pursue her own. She was a certified aroma therapist and wanted to continue her studies and start a product line. She wanted to complete the ministerial studies she had begun at age 19. She was ready to put on her big girl panties and move away from Mommy.

  I knew better than to ask one single question about anything other than the chemo. Was she sure? She had spoken to her doctor and she was very sure. She was going to start the following week. She would receive treatment twice a week for six weeks, and then they would do another CAT scan and more blood work. She would not go bald. It was her intention to do one round of chemo and then prepare to move. She asked if I would go to chemo with her. I told her I would be honored.

  We took a special blanket in a special bag, lots of snacks, and a few things to read. The room was filled with men and women, old and young, some bald, others not, all sitting in chairs, reading, napping, or chatting with their escorts. It was nothing like I had imagined. The nurses were funny as heck, and not one of them blinked when I asked if I could pray over the medicine before they administered it.

  After the second visit, each nurse knew to hand me the bag of medication before they hung it on the pole and started the IV on Gemmia. It took four visits before she experienced even the slightest nausea. By her sixth visit, she felt tired the day of the treatment and great the day after. By the fourth week of treatment, we were going out to lunch afterwards. One day we treated ourselves to a stroll through Saks Fifth Avenue, right down the street from the doctor’s office. By the time she finished treatment, she was living on her own again, coming into the Inner Visions office once or twice a week. She even taught her class one weekend. She still needed a lot of rest, but it seemed as if she had turned the corner. According to the doctor, her white cell count was only six points above normal, and the CAT scan indicated that there were no abnormal cells in her abdominal area. We were not out of the woods, but she didn’t need to see him for another three months.

  She immediately got busy working on her product line and studying for advanced certification as an aroma therapist. She put her house on the market and made plans to give away or sell most of her belongings. She started gathering boxes and packing. She was alive again. She didn’t want to wait until June to move. She was thinking more like January. The only question was what to do with Niamoja, who would be in the middle of a school year. I suggested that instead of selling the house, she could rent it out; that way she would have an income. She didn’t like that idea at all. She needed the money to buy an apartment in L.A. She wanted her own place as soon as possible. Being the wise mother, I decided to keep my mouth shut; no more suggestions from me. But Gemmia mistook my silence for something else, which took us down a road we had never traveled.

  We must learn not to give up when requirements are not met or when commitments are broken. To do so is a refusal to allow mistakes to be corrected and a demonstration of an unwillingness to forgive yourself or anyone else who needs forgiveness.

  CHAPTER 14

  TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES

  Dealing with Gemmia’s illness opened up a new can of deadly worms in my heart and mind. They were worms of guilt and fear; worms of failure and helplessness. There was nothing I could do about the fact that my child had cancer. There was nothing I could do about the way she was choosing to address the cancer. And there was absolutely nothing I could do about the fact that she wanted to move to the other side of the country and take my grandchild with her.

  The only thing I could do was Tap and create affirmations to convince myself that things were exactly as they needed to be. On some days, the doubt and fear were so strong, by the time I finished my EFT practice my body was sore. On other days, I Tapped so hard, I expected to start bleeding. I didn’t and I always felt better.

  On some level, I was really okay with the fact that she wanted to move. Gemmia was a brilliant and talented young woman; she would do well wherever she was. As much as I dislike L.A., I was really okay with the idea of traveling there two or three times a year, and she made it perfectly clear that she planned to come to Maryland to teach her classes and participate in the workshops. I was thrilled that she would be studying with Reverend Michael and that she would be a part of his church, a large, loving, diverse community. Between all of the classes and activities at the church, and with the help of Rev. Michael his wife Rickie, Ms. Alice, Rev. Michael’s mother and his brother Akili, I knew that she would be well supported and protected.

  My challenge was different. My challenge was about the statement she made about why she was moving to L.A. It had a very unsettling ring to it: “I have been living your vision, not mine.” As gently as I could, I tried to get more information. Did she feel trapped? Did she not want to participate in Inner Visions? Had I forced her to become part of my vision and ministry? There were times when she would respond in a very clear and honest manner. At other times, she seemed downright hostile and said I was trying to talk her out of her move. The information I did get from her was astounding.

  Gemmia knew that I had done the best I could as a mother, which meant that she didn’t hold things against me. She knew I was no longer that frightened and confused young woman, chasing men and money to her own detriment and the detriment of everyone around her. But she had deeply mixed feelings about the way I had raised her, and she was angry over all she felt she had missed as a child. What the child heard, saw, and made up often had very little to do with what was really going on. During Gemmia’s recovery, we spent time telling stories and remembering the good old bad days. Gemmia said that she was very, very proud of me and what I had accomplished in my life, with very little help from anyone. She reminded me that she was there, she was involved, and she knew everything, from her perspective. It was the things that she saw and felt that drew her into my vision called Inner Visions.

  When I first started Inner Visions back in Philadelphia, it was Gemmia and Nisa who helped me fold and mail a onepage newsletter. She remembered when I had to decide between buying stamps to mail the newsletter and buying food for dinner. She remembered my first keynote address and my first media interview. She remembered how excited we all were and the sacrifices she made to support me. There were many things that Gemmia admitted she hadn’t told me, and there were things she hadn’t asked me for, because she didn’t want to be a burden. No, she didn’t feel trapped at Inner Visions. It was also a part of her dream; it simply wasn’t all of her dream. She was proud to be a p
art of something built from the ground up and that now had a national reach and reputation. Everything she did, everything she gave, she had given willingly. All these things we had talked about many times. Many difficult memories and hard feelings had already come to light when we dealt with Jimmy’s misconduct in the school and the issues that that raised between us. But now there were other revelations that literally took my breath away.

  Gemmia talked about betrayal. The most serious was my failure to tell her who her real father was, and the way I finally did tell her. Gemmia’s father, my first husband, left New York when she was three years old. I didn’t hear from him for almost ten years. His mother was always around, but I never explained to my children how she was related to them. When Gemmia’s father returned to New York, he wanted to see his daughter. According to Gemmia, one day when she was about 12, she saw this man in our house. When she asked me who he was, she remembered me saying, “That is your father, your real father.” Then he didn’t come around any more. I never said another word to her about it, and she was afraid to ask. Of course, I didn’t recall it happening that way, but that didn’t matter. I had lied to her about her father, and he had been absent from her life with no explanation. Now she wanted to have a relationship with her father and realized that she didn’t need my permission to do so.

  She was perfectly right. Like every parent, I tried to protect my children. I wanted the best for them. When a man showed up who was willing to take on a ready-made family, I slipped into a happily-ever-after fantasy. Now I knew it was wrong. Back then, I was young and stupid and emotionally immature. The worst of it was the repetition of the pattern with which I had been raised, immersed in lies and other people’s fantasies. Talking to Gemmia made it perfectly clear that I had unknowingly perpetuated the same pathology that I grew up in. I had created a web of lies. I knew how much it had hurt me, and I had vowed I would never do that to my children. Now I realized that I had failed miserably at keeping that promise to myself.

  As the middle child, Gemmia said, she always felt ignored and dismissed. Damon and Nisa were very strong personalities. They demanded my attention. They were disobedient and acted out in ways that she did not. She thought that if she were good in school, obedient, and helpful, I would see her. When I created Inner Visions, she found a way to get and keep my attention in a way that her brother and sister could not. Gemmia never felt important in my life until we started building Inner Visions together.

  For my part, I had no idea she was performing to get my attention. I assumed that it was who she was. She was wise beyond her years and inherently brilliant. Listening to her version of her life, though, I could see the dysfunction that I had perpetuated. I had never acknowledged her, affirmed her, or praised her enough. Of course, I had rarely been praised or acknowledged as a child.

  As I listened to her, I realized that Gemmia’s story was my story. I had visited upon her just what I had endured, minus the physical violence. The thought of it made me sick to my stomach. How was this possible? How could I have been so blind? So stupid? I thought that I had shifted my patterns enough to spare my children my tragedy. According to Gemmia, I had been a carbon copy of the people who raised me.

  The truth of what she said left a gaping hole in my heart. More important, it left me feeling as if my work in the world had all been a farce. I was a fake! A phony! I was selling a bill of goods, teaching things that I was not doing in my own life. I didn’t think I would ever be able to stand in front of an audience and open my mouth with any sense of legitimacy again.

  If what Gemmia said was true, then it stood to reason that much of what my husband had said to me was also true. He often accused me of not practicing what I was preaching. He was very good at pointing out to me when I had breached integrity or where I was not being loving. Of course, most of what he was telling me focused on his needs and what he thought I was not doing for him. Yet in the vortex of criticism and rejection from those I loved, his words and Gemmia’s collided and took on the same meaning. I was not who I held myself out to be. And if I wasn’t, just who the hell was I?

  With these thoughts swirling in my mind, I concluded that my husband had not destroyed my marriage. I had. Perhaps he had been the voice of reason. Maybe the things he told me about myself were true. He always complained that I made everything a priority over him. He often challenged me about only seeing things my way. He said that I was manipulative and dishonest. According to Gemmia, some of that was true. I had discounted and dismissed the only man I ever really loved, and now he was leaving my life. I often wondered why I kept being guided to be still and let him take the lead. Maybe that was God’s way of keeping me on hold, because God knew that the day would come when I would have these conversations with Gemmia and come to my senses. Oh my God! What if it was me all along? My fault! My bad!What had I done?

  With all of these storms raging in my mind, I was attempting to write a book. A book about how people needed to clear their minds and hearts of their personal lies. It was the book that I needed to read. A book in which I thought I could share the truth as I was learning it moment by moment. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the words onto the paper. When I did, they were a jumbled rambling. Instead of seeing that it was a function of the emotional turmoil I was experiencing, I fell into a deep well of shame.

  Rather than staying hopeless, guilty, and angry at myself, I decided it was all God’s fault. If I was so messed up, if I had done such damage to the people I loved, why had I been guided to serve in the world? Why had I been raised to a position of prominence only to be torn down? Most of my money was gone. I had been publicly disgraced by losing two television shows. My marriage was in shambles. I concluded that somehow, somewhere along the way, I had missed the mark. The voice I had accepted as Divine Guidance was actually the voice of my ego leading me right into destruction. I was being punished by God for not being able to tell the difference between the voice of God and the voices of my own self-made distortions.

  I decided that I was being punished for all the bad choices and poor decisions of my youth. I had lied, stolen money from the government, had three abortions and slept with a married man. I had failed to honor commitments, been late for almost everything I ever did, was in conflict about being Christian and Yoruba at the same time, and I had not been to church in years. Maybe I had used people to get want I wanted and needed. Maybe I had inflicted immeasurable harm on my children. Maybe I had made a mistake by taking my grandson away from Nisa. My only son had gone totally astray as a result of what I did and did not give him as a mother. This was all God’s fault! Not mine!

  God bless Ken Kizer and Steve Hardison. These two men stood with me through the tornado of turmoil that I was creating in my own mind. Ken told me that it was a natural, normal reaction to the events of the past seven months. He assured me that I had not been a fake or a phony. He was willing to be a living testimonial to the power and veracity of what I taught in the world. The guilt, well, that was another story. He knew that guilt was my Achilles heel. It was in my DNA. He said that everything that Gemmia shared was a function of her own soul-searching in the midst of a life-threatening experience. That too, he said, was normal. What she felt and what she thought was none of my business, unless I had held a conscious intention to hurt or harm her.

  Ken reminded me that like everyone else, Gemmia’s soul had chosen its mother. It just happened to be me. She, like me and everyone else, had chosen, at the soul level, to be born into the circumstances of her life for the purpose of growing, learning, and healing. He felt that we were a great team. We had done great work together. Now our relationship and the circumstances of our lives were changing. It was hard. It was frightening. And he was sure that we would both land on our feet.

  There can be no change without chaos. All real, lasting change comes as a result of trembling at the foundational level of what exists. Change was a good thing, and I didn’t need to beat myself down because of the past. It was every single one
of those circumstances that had led to the change that we were both experiencing, and it was all good. I spent many hours talking to Ken and working myself back to a state of balance.

  Steve and I talked about my marriage. He was not at all in agreement that everything was my fault. Of course, I knew that it takes two people to make a marriage, and I did realize that people come together based on the needs of their souls and their spiritual curriculum. I could acknowledge with Steve that the problems did not come from within the marriage itself. Instead, they came from within both of us. I went all the way back to my experience in Africa, to not really knowing the man I was marrying, and recognized that I saw him from a place of wounding and need rather than choice.

  Loving him as I did had almost nothing to do with him. It was about having more of what I had always known. In my mind, if I could get him to love and accept me, it would somehow mean that my father really did love and accept me. The world-renowned author, teacher, and speaker had not married the man she loved. The 13-year-old, lost, confused, ugly, bad girl had married the man she thought she could never have—her father.

  Once again, Gemmia was my teacher. I was being healed as a result of her illness. I was getting more from her than I had ever given to her. According to both Ken and Steve, when parents are conscious and open, that is the way it should be. Children bring to life the subconscious issues of the parents. How parents deal with their children creates a direct line to the things they need to heal within themselves. This led me to another question, one I dreaded asking, but had to ask. It had been looming in my mind since that first day at the hospital when Dr. Mussenden revealed the nature of Gemmia’s illness. I had tried to hide it in the back of my mind, but it kept inching forward. Now, with these two men holding me so closely to the truth, I just needed to know, how was I responsible for Gemmia having cancer? What, if any, role did I play in her illness? I needed to know. Unfortunately, neither Ken nor Steve could tell me the answer.