Speaker 1: Welcome to Checking In with Michelle Williams, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and The Black Effect. Hey Hey, Hey, y'all, how
Speaker 1: y'all doing. I have someone absolutely amazing, a legend, gonna
Speaker 1: go down in history as a trailblazer. She has been
Speaker 1: helping people with their mental health since the late nineties.
Speaker 1: And y'all, this icon, this legend is here to drop
Speaker 1: some real knowledge that we can use today. I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna waste no time. Let's get into it, y'all. This
Speaker 1: is an amazing, amazing day that I have someone that
Speaker 1: I can share space with. I'm gonna consider this sacred
Speaker 1: space because of who she is, and that is what
Speaker 1: she commands. Eyan la Venzant is one of the country's
Speaker 1: most celebrated writers and speakers, among the most influential socially
Speaker 1: engaged spiritual life coaches of our time, best selling author
Speaker 1: and has a podcast on Shondaland Audio called The R Spot.
Speaker 1: And she has fixed all of our lives, whether we
Speaker 1: were actually on the show or just watching from afar.
Speaker 1: Please welcome. I don't care. I know this ain't in person,
Speaker 1: but stand to your feet and welcome mss Ian la
Speaker 1: ven Zant.
Speaker 2: Ah. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: It truly is a joy to sit with you. I
Speaker 1: shared space with you some years ago at Essence Fest
Speaker 1: a while ago. Oh my gosh, yes ma'am, Yes, ma'am.
Speaker 1: And I'm glad that I got to honor you and
Speaker 1: give you your fly hours while you were there. And
Speaker 1: so today's episode is going to be a lot of honor.
Speaker 1: But while you hear of your wisdom, I'm not even
Speaker 1: gonna call them nuggets, because Iyanla, don't drop nuggets. Nuggets
Speaker 1: is what little shit suits be dropping in the yard.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you, she drops gems, Okay, life gems. You
Speaker 1: debuted into the mainstream with your iconic appearances on the
Speaker 1: Oprah Winfrey Show in nineteen ninety eight, and you taught
Speaker 1: women to say I'm not broke, but instead to say
Speaker 1: I am temporarily out of cash. Just some of your
Speaker 1: many sayings and how you were one of the first
Speaker 1: black women someone that we could look up to that
Speaker 1: we could talk about our state of our mental health
Speaker 1: without any shame, but somebody that we can say, wow,
Speaker 1: missing Ila gets it. We're a trailblazer to do that
Speaker 1: on such a big play. So from twenty two, from
Speaker 1: back to nineteen ninety eight. How do you feel about
Speaker 1: seeing how widely celebrated it is that we can talk
Speaker 1: about our mental health.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just I'm so grateful, and I also want
Speaker 2: us to do more than give it lip service. Now
Speaker 2: at least we're talking about it, because you know, back then,
Speaker 2: you didn't even want people to know if you had
Speaker 2: a headache, you know, much less if you were feeling depressed.
Speaker 2: So I'm really grateful, and I still have great concern
Speaker 2: that the way mental health is addressed and spoken about
Speaker 2: and the services for it scheople don't always meet the
Speaker 2: needs of women of color, particularly women of color, because
Speaker 2: the depth of our wounded us, the depth of our experiences,
Speaker 2: aren't always include did in the How can I say
Speaker 2: this the traditional psychological models. I worked with a woman
Speaker 2: a few years ago who, from all perspectives and intentions,
Speaker 2: was physically verbally aggressive and you know, off the charts
Speaker 2: if I can. And I was working with her and
Speaker 2: I said, you know what, you're depressed. It didn't look
Speaker 2: like the normal lay in the bed, don't brush your
Speaker 2: teeth depression. And what I discovered, and I did some
Speaker 2: work and talked to some people and came to understand
Speaker 2: that there is a form of depression that manifests as
Speaker 2: overt aggressive or abusive behavior, specifically among black women, and
Speaker 2: nobody was talking about that, you know, so I was
Speaker 2: able to connect her to someone that was familiar with it.
Speaker 2: So a lot of times we see with us what
Speaker 2: would be called bad behavior, aggressive behavior, or the angry
Speaker 2: black woman. It's really a form of depression. Depression meaning
Speaker 2: that there's a place within where we feel totally alone,
Speaker 2: totally unsupported, and hold the belief that we have to
Speaker 2: do everything on our own for ourselves because nobody is
Speaker 2: there to help us. That can be overwhelming, and what
Speaker 2: it does to the average person is lays them down
Speaker 2: in the bed. Yes, what it does to us very
Speaker 2: often it sends us out with a vengeance. So it's
Speaker 2: just something that I think we need to pay more
Speaker 2: attention to.
Speaker 1: It not only sends us out with a vengeance, but
Speaker 1: it's because we have to.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of people don't have, you know, the
Speaker 1: resources to take time off to go get counseling with
Speaker 1: someone that speaks to them.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I want your take on why do you think as
Speaker 1: it relates to black people, that when we say the
Speaker 1: word depression as if it's a plague. I want to
Speaker 1: stay away from me. We don't talk about that, honey,
Speaker 1: I'm saved, sanctified, feel with the hot host. Ain't no
Speaker 1: depression over here, And it's like, yes there.
Speaker 2: It's cultural for us, I mean, dating back to our
Speaker 2: oldest ancestors, A we don't affirm anything wrong, so there
Speaker 2: can't be anything wrong with me. And if I can't
Speaker 2: live up to the expectations, the requirements, the demands, the
Speaker 2: responsibilities of whatever my role is in the village or
Speaker 2: in the community and now in the society, then there's
Speaker 2: something wrong with me. Culturally, I don't speak about that. Culturally,
Speaker 2: we cover it up, we hide it, we mask it
Speaker 2: because if there's something wrong with me, it's going to
Speaker 2: impart certain responsibilities on other people. And because I don't
Speaker 2: want to be a burden, let me just mask, cover high,
Speaker 2: deny whatever is going on. So that's one thing. The
Speaker 2: other thing is and this is specifically for women of color.
Speaker 2: And I say women of color because I'm part Native American,
Speaker 2: part Latin, and part Black and part so I say
Speaker 2: women of color because very often, as descendants of Africans,
Speaker 2: we don't look at the other our sister women in
Speaker 2: the Native American culture or the Latin culture as experiencing
Speaker 2: many of the same things that we do to a
Speaker 2: different degree, but very often as women of color. This
Speaker 2: whole notion of depression speaks to our strength. And since
Speaker 2: we have the myth of the superwoman and the beast
Speaker 2: of burden and the one responsible for everyone else, we
Speaker 2: we can't abdicate our responsibilities or fail to meet the
Speaker 2: expectations of others. So we deny again in mask or
Speaker 2: overcompensate to prove to you, I'm not feeling like a
Speaker 2: pile of crap. I'm going to overdo, overgive, over commit,
Speaker 2: or overspeak, you know, yes. And then for Latin women,
Speaker 2: you know, culturally, for them in the machismo of the
Speaker 2: Latin community, what the woman wants or needs or whatever,
Speaker 2: you know, that's subjugated to whatever the men are wanted.
Speaker 2: And then in the Native community, you know, women are
Speaker 2: like dust on your shoe. You don't even ask them.
Speaker 2: They and if you ask them, they probably won't have
Speaker 2: anything to say. So it's shifting. It's shifting, and we
Speaker 2: have to be grateful. But the shift requires is that
Speaker 2: we become willing to speak it aloud, to speak it aloud,
Speaker 2: you know, yes, and not just carry the burden or
Speaker 2: take on the responsibility as a part of this dysfunctional
Speaker 2: culture that we find ourselves in here where women are
Speaker 2: just carrying so much weight.
Speaker 1: Carrying so much weight. And I thank you for affirming
Speaker 1: and empowering us to begin to talk about it. Even
Speaker 1: if some of us we're talking about we don't have
Speaker 1: the right language for, we might not be talking about
Speaker 1: it in the right way, but I'm so glad that
Speaker 1: we are getting there. As it relates to depression, I
Speaker 1: remember asking my mother. I became open about depression in
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen, pretty much by accident. I was doing an
Speaker 1: interview and somehow I was like, oh, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: back in twenty twelve, I was in the bed for
Speaker 1: weeks talking about depression and I'm supposed to be promoting
Speaker 1: Fell Out of the musical, and here I am. Somehow
Speaker 1: depression gotten the mixed and mister an, let you know
Speaker 1: how this goes like you might think you said something
Speaker 1: off the record, but it made the interview and it
Speaker 1: became sure this headline, and I was so ashamed because
Speaker 1: I thought, are people going to look at me as
Speaker 1: a liability? Then in twenty eighteen having to check myself
Speaker 1: into a treatment facility for depression, and the support and
Speaker 1: the love that I've gotten, and for people saying thank
Speaker 1: you for not letting me feel like something's wrong with
Speaker 1: me or that I'm alone. I have decided to speak
Speaker 1: up about it and let people know the journey, and
Speaker 1: thank you for being a trailblazer and helping people feel empowered. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to talk about it. I'm saying all this to say,
Speaker 1: even still trying to talk to say my mother about it.
Speaker 1: She is seventy, there's still some oh yeah, resistance, resistance
Speaker 1: and shame, shame even and even to talk about other
Speaker 1: medical issues. I need to know what was carried in
Speaker 1: my bloodline. Why are we so afraid to say, well,
Speaker 1: you know, grandfather had such and such, such and such.
Speaker 1: Now she did tell me, she said she does believe
Speaker 1: my grandfather, had there been a diagnosis for him, that
Speaker 1: he would have been bipolar. So I was shocked to
Speaker 1: hear her say that. But mental health issues, I don't know,
Speaker 1: like you said, if it's still because we don't want
Speaker 1: to affirm anything wrong or give power to spirits, because
Speaker 1: apparently what you give power to that thing manifesting girls
Speaker 1: and I'm like, no, we got to know what grandfather had,
Speaker 1: we got to know what Mama had.
Speaker 2: Well, again, for us, it is cultural, and you know
Speaker 2: how it was handled back in great great grandma's days.
Speaker 2: You went to the wise woman or the or the
Speaker 2: medicine man, and you got yourself together. Every disease or
Speaker 2: imbalance has a spiritual component, and many of us embrace
Speaker 2: a spiritual foundation that doesn't always support us in telling
Speaker 2: the truth about what we are experiencing. But culturally, not
Speaker 2: only was it is it taboo to admit that there's
Speaker 2: something wrong with you, It is inappropriate to speak your
Speaker 2: family business. So God, now that I'm older and I
Speaker 2: look back and I say, oh God, my cousin James
Speaker 2: was gay. He wasn't even gay, he was hysterical. You know.
Speaker 2: But black men, you didn't talk about it. You didn't
Speaker 2: talk your family business outside. And very often we didn't know,
Speaker 2: we didn't know. We called it something else.
Speaker 1: We called it crazy.
Speaker 2: They just different, They different, right, don't even you know?
Speaker 2: So it's cultural or for us, but those taboos and
Speaker 2: those behaviors that are not supported because we live in
Speaker 2: a very different time. We live in a very different time.
Speaker 2: You know, there was a time when I could go
Speaker 2: and lay my head in Grandma's bosom, and her in
Speaker 2: the prayer warriors would stand around me and lift me out.
Speaker 2: But now Grandma might be in the crackhouse, or she
Speaker 2: might be in a senior citizen center, or I might
Speaker 2: not even know who she is, you know. So some
Speaker 2: of the things, some of the things that we had
Speaker 2: in our community, in our village, in our culture that
Speaker 2: would support us in moving through these things, we don't
Speaker 2: have them anymore, so we have to come up with
Speaker 2: new ways. The other thing is people talk about mental health,
Speaker 2: but they still think of two words crazy and wrong,
Speaker 2: which then generates a lot of shame for black people.
Speaker 2: You can be fat, you can be ugly, you can
Speaker 2: be broke, but you can't be wrong. You know, it's
Speaker 2: cultural for us, as we were indoctrinated to believe that
Speaker 2: because our skin was dark and our hair was wooly,
Speaker 2: and because we came from a place called Africa where
Speaker 2: the majority of the people were dark with wooly hair,
Speaker 2: there's something wrong with us. We don't meet the standard,
Speaker 2: and we don't understand that. We carry that as a
Speaker 2: cellular memory in our DNA. So let me weigh five
Speaker 2: hundred pounds, and every medical facility wants to help me.
Speaker 2: Let me be ugly as the bottom of somebody's shoe,
Speaker 2: and I can go get some plastic surgery. But please
Speaker 2: don't let me be wrong. Don't let anything be wrong
Speaker 2: with me, okay, because then that triggers up that cellular
Speaker 2: memory of being inferior and being savage, and being beaten
Speaker 2: and being denigrated, dishonor disrespect. We don't understand that that
Speaker 2: still rings true within us. So while we talk about
Speaker 2: mental health, we still have these labels that we attached
Speaker 2: to it, and we don't think of it just as
Speaker 2: a form of health. It's health. Your mind needs to
Speaker 2: be healthy, and that's what mental health is. How do
Speaker 2: I get my mind healthy? It's nothing wrong with it,
Speaker 2: But the same way I can have breast cancer, or
Speaker 2: I can have diabetes, or I can have hypertension, or
Speaker 2: I can have gout or arthritis, that's health in the body.
Speaker 2: Mental health is simply health in the mind. And the
Speaker 2: things that give you gout give you gout, and the
Speaker 2: things that give you depression give you depression. And the
Speaker 2: things that give you cancer give you cancer. And the
Speaker 2: things that make you bipolar, make you buipolar. It's just health,
Speaker 2: and that's how we got to think about it.
Speaker 1: Come on, if y'll checking in is on the right path.
Speaker 1: That is what we speak over here because we put
Speaker 1: mental health way over here, but our part of a
Speaker 1: vascular health, gynecological health, neural health, we all lump it
Speaker 1: over here. Yeah, it's like I've tell people, you know,
Speaker 1: some of the same mental health offices, psychiatric offices, psychologists.
Speaker 1: They're in the same building as your obgyn. It's not
Speaker 1: over there somewhere.
Speaker 2: The other thing that we don't give enough consideration to
Speaker 2: is that there are physiological influences on mental health. If
Speaker 2: there are certain imbalances and discordant energies in your physical body,
Speaker 2: it will affect your mind. My daughter had coalon cancer
Speaker 2: thirty one years old. Never drank, never smoke, had been
Speaker 2: a vegetarian for twenty two years, and she got coalon cancer.
Speaker 2: And they said it was a rare form of coalon
Speaker 2: cancer called familial palopopis, which is supposed to be ancestral.
Speaker 2: It runs through your bloodline. We couldn't find it in
Speaker 2: my side of the family or her father's side of family,
Speaker 2: but my mother did have breast cancer, so it may
Speaker 2: have just hipped the generation and showed up that way.
Speaker 2: But throughout her treatment, I mean it was just certain
Speaker 2: days it was like, who is this person and where
Speaker 2: did they come from? And in prayer one day, I
Speaker 2: was just reminded, the same disease that is affecting her
Speaker 2: body is affecting her mind. She is thinking with a
Speaker 2: diseased mind. You cannot expect her body to be affected
Speaker 2: by cancer and not have an impact on her mind.
Speaker 2: And I was like, oh my god, I never even
Speaker 2: thought about that. So there are physiological things that also
Speaker 2: lead to certain mental health imbalances or mental health challenges.
Speaker 2: I personally happened to believe that the whole notion of
Speaker 2: being bipolar what they used to call what did they
Speaker 2: had another name a manic depressive, manic depressed. It got
Speaker 2: to be bipolar about but.
Speaker 1: Ten years ago, but I did not know that.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it was manic depressive, then it became bipolar.
Speaker 2: I happened to believe that there is such a powerful
Speaker 2: spiritual component to bipolarists that you can't fix with a pill.
Speaker 2: You can't fix that with a pill. There's something going
Speaker 2: on in there with the spirit that you got to address,
Speaker 2: you know, In African culture, it is believed that we
Speaker 2: have what's called an egg bay, and an egg bay
Speaker 2: is the union of our ancestors on the other side. Yes,
Speaker 2: and sometimes for many of us in our ancestral line
Speaker 2: people weren't buried with reverence. People weren't honored after they died.
Speaker 2: They were hung on trees enough there for days and
Speaker 2: then maybe dumped in a hole. But what happened to
Speaker 2: put that spirit to rest so that that spirit would
Speaker 2: have rest? You know now that the physical body is decayed,
Speaker 2: who's calling that person's name in prayer? So I personally
Speaker 2: believe that there are some spiritual imbalances in our ancestral
Speaker 2: lineage that also lend to the experience of bipolarism. That's
Speaker 2: just me. I'm crazy. Don't pay me no, mom.
Speaker 1: I have never durned near stood up during it. And
Speaker 1: I can stand up because I got my breeches on below.
Speaker 1: So okay, okay, so okay, okay, you're helping me. You
Speaker 1: answered the why I've gotten so angry at people. Even
Speaker 1: lately in comments of certain people talking about therapy and
Speaker 1: Jesus therapy and spiritual reality, it's been said, well, you
Speaker 1: don't need this because you don't trust God enough, but
Speaker 1: I am so my cellular stuff is just going because
Speaker 1: you just answered why people have a disconnect between our
Speaker 1: mental health therapy that side and the spiritual side. It
Speaker 1: can be and it is both. And you can have
Speaker 1: prayer and like you said, you can have something going
Speaker 1: on in the mind, but you're still a great woman,
Speaker 1: You're still a successful man, but something's going on in
Speaker 1: the spirit.
Speaker 2: Yeah. You know, think of your therapists as the gonecologists
Speaker 2: for your brains.
Speaker 1: You're talking right.
Speaker 2: You know you don't go to the godacologists to take
Speaker 2: care of that stuff and then not do everything else
Speaker 2: to take care of it. You know, your therapist is
Speaker 2: the gonecologists for your brain, or the theologists for your brain,
Speaker 2: or the.
Speaker 1: Sound bite for the post.
Speaker 2: Think of your sound bitts as the god ecologist for
Speaker 2: your brain. Got to go in there o corral, see
Speaker 2: what happening in what's going on, and then help you.
Speaker 2: And in terms of prayer, God uses people so you
Speaker 2: can pray and you can embrace whatever your faith walk is,
Speaker 2: whether it's Jesus or Buddha, Muhammad or I mean Allah
Speaker 2: or whatever it is. And maybe that divine entity is
Speaker 2: going to send you to the right gonecologist for your brain.
Speaker 2: Come on together, let me tell you a quick story.
Speaker 2: My birth mother died when I was two, and unfortunately,
Speaker 2: everybody either forgot or chose to tell me that my
Speaker 2: birth mother was an alcoholic. And it was discovered when
Speaker 2: she was carrying me that she had breast cancer and leukemia.
Speaker 2: And so I was born and she died when I
Speaker 2: was two years and three months old. And like I said,
Speaker 2: nobody ever told me grow up thinking one woman is
Speaker 2: my mother and she wasn't. I was thirty years old
Speaker 2: and I found out. But here's the point that I
Speaker 2: want to make. My mother was an alcoholic. I grew up.
Speaker 2: I never drank. Never. I don't dream this very day.
Speaker 2: My biggest drink is a is a Shirley Temple. And
Speaker 2: every now and then I'll have kolua and cream when
Speaker 2: I want to be grown.
Speaker 1: Don't be grown. I thought she was gonna say ginger ale,
Speaker 1: but okay.
Speaker 2: A lou and cream. And then also my mother was
Speaker 2: the other woman. My father was married. My father was married,
Speaker 2: and he and his wife lived around the corner. My
Speaker 2: mother was his side piece, and she lived in my
Speaker 2: grandmother's house. My father's mother's house, and that's where I
Speaker 2: was born and my brother was born. And again, because
Speaker 2: I never knew her, I grew up all my life
Speaker 2: feeling guilty. I was always wrong. I always did something wrong,
Speaker 2: no matter what happened, it was my fault. I was bad.
Speaker 2: Blah blah blah blah blah. Fast forward. I was about
Speaker 2: thirty years old when I found out the truth about
Speaker 2: my mother being dead, being the other woman, and being
Speaker 2: the alcoholic, and through work, spiritual work, prayer and meditation
Speaker 2: and also working with I guess he was a therapist.
Speaker 2: I discovered this. Hear me that I marinated in the womb,
Speaker 2: first of all in liquor, so I probably had enough
Speaker 2: liquor in the womb. I didn't never need another drink,
Speaker 2: you know, I never I had probably you know, she
Speaker 2: was an alcoholic. I don't know what she was drinking,
Speaker 2: but probably. And the grace is, this is grace that
Speaker 2: I was not born with fetal alcohol syndrome. I wasn't not,
Speaker 2: but I was born within the emotional addiction, and it
Speaker 2: was guilt. I marinated in my mother's guilt of being
Speaker 2: the other woman. She was guilty and she was ashamed.
Speaker 2: So for most of I mean, I was pregnant at sixteen,
Speaker 2: pregnant at nineteen, lived in an abusive marriage, did so
Speaker 2: many things that engendered guilt within me, and I just
Speaker 2: lived it out until, with prayer, meditation and a good
Speaker 2: support system, discovered that the guilt that I was living,
Speaker 2: a shame that I was feeling, wasn't even mine, it
Speaker 2: was hers. I didn't have anything to be guilty about,
Speaker 2: anything to be ashamed of, but I marinated in it
Speaker 2: in the womb. Let me tell you something, Michelle. I'd
Speaker 2: work with that, and I researched it and I dug it,
Speaker 2: and it just became clear to me that many of
Speaker 2: us marinated in things in the womb. Shame, fear, guilt, aggression, loneliness, sadness, abandoned, abandoned, rejection, disappointment.
Speaker 2: That's what our mothers were experiencing. And it gets woven
Speaker 2: into the matrix of our DNA, of our cells, of
Speaker 2: our bone marrow, and we come forth with these issues
Speaker 2: and challenges and problems that affect our mental health and
Speaker 2: then not even ours, they're not even ours.
Speaker 1: So not only intergenerational, but what would you call it,
Speaker 1: intro wound, intrautero, something.
Speaker 2: In vitro, in vitro, you know, in utero, whatever you
Speaker 2: want to call it. My mother was a drunken hear
Speaker 2: me I say this. You don't say this because I'm
Speaker 2: gonna get you if you say it. My mother was
Speaker 2: a drunken hole who lived with shame and guilt. Now
Speaker 2: I can say that, and I want to say that
Speaker 2: to understand what she was experiencing so that I could
Speaker 2: forgive it a meal. But once I did the spiritual
Speaker 2: work of forgiveness for my then I also had to
Speaker 2: do the work required to shift my consciousness and my behavior.
Speaker 2: I'm not always wrong, it's not always my fault. It's
Speaker 2: not my responsibility. And I don't have to sneak around
Speaker 2: and hide round and not be the truth of who
Speaker 2: I am because my mother was the other woman. I'm
Speaker 2: telling you, it's all about mental health, and we need both.
Speaker 2: We need the prayer and the spiritual work, and we
Speaker 2: need somebody to help us unpack that. But how many
Speaker 2: of us don't even know our mother's story Because culturally,
Speaker 2: your mama is your mama. You don't ask her personal business.
Speaker 2: But I want to know who was you sleeping with?
Speaker 2: Was you holish? Was you drinking? Then just smoke some marijuana.
Speaker 1: And then like, Mama, you got any tips that you
Speaker 1: can give me for later? I want to ask you,
Speaker 1: but I want to affirm you. You must have did
Speaker 1: something right. I'm here, what was going on? Right? Right?
Speaker 2: And I want to know. This is a very simple thing,
Speaker 2: and many people who were here, I hope they will
Speaker 2: do it, and I also hope they realize how difficult
Speaker 2: it is. I ask your mother or your father, your parents, however, whatever,
Speaker 2: what was her love story? When I recognize my parents
Speaker 2: love story, can I tell you something didn't know? My
Speaker 2: mother died when I was two years three months old.
Speaker 2: I spent forty years in a relationship with a married man,
Speaker 2: just like my mother, and I never even knew who
Speaker 2: she was. Forty years in and out of a relationship
Speaker 2: with a married man.
Speaker 1: So the same.
Speaker 2: Same thing, same pattern. It's called pathology. So ask your
Speaker 2: mother her love story. Where was she at mentally, emotionally,
Speaker 2: physically when she was in relationship with your dad? Where
Speaker 2: was who was she? Find out their love story, what
Speaker 2: brought them together, how they came together? And I guarantee
Speaker 2: you you're going to see pieces and parts and elements
Speaker 2: of that in your life. Mental and emotional and physical being.
Speaker 2: You're going to see it. So many of us get
Speaker 2: to depression or or mental imbalance at a certain age
Speaker 2: because we marinated in it.
Speaker 1: So it is not our fault. But with what you
Speaker 1: are telling us right now is an opportunity and a
Speaker 1: God divine moment for it to be healed. You've heard it.
Speaker 1: You can't heal what's not revealed. You repeat what's not repaired.
Speaker 1: I don't know what to repair, so I'm repeating some
Speaker 1: I don't even know it's what I'm repeating because I
Speaker 1: think I think people think you're just doing your choices. No,
Speaker 1: it's pathology, yeah.
Speaker 2: It is, and it not your fault, but it is
Speaker 2: your responsibility. It's not your fault, but it is your
Speaker 2: responsibility to do what is required to bring the level
Speaker 2: of healing you need, because you're healing for future generations
Speaker 2: and also for past generations, because as you clear it
Speaker 2: for you, you clean it up in your egg bay, your
Speaker 2: ancestors in the heavenly realm, you clean it up for them. Also,
Speaker 2: you lift them as you left, because they're alive in
Speaker 2: your DNA. Now that's just how I look at it
Speaker 2: as a crazy African native American that eats and gotta
Speaker 2: do lesson adults, gonna do less, do me, no mine,
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: You know so much, so much wisdom that is so divine.
Speaker 1: I promise you. I don't think I've gotten to one
Speaker 1: question that we had prepared.
Speaker 2: Shut out.
Speaker 1: No no, no, no, no no no, I don't mind. I
Speaker 1: don't mind. Spirit said other wise. Now considered everything that
Speaker 1: you have gone through, and you still decided to help
Speaker 1: other people. Other people could say, my mama left me too,
Speaker 1: my mama died, but they tru to live in that.
Speaker 1: What made you say I'm going to help others millions?
Speaker 2: I never said that. I never said it. It's about purpose,
Speaker 2: it's about your calling. I never said that I was
Speaker 2: trying to be in the black female Perry Mason. I want,
Speaker 2: I wanted. I I'm a criminal defense attorney. That's what
Speaker 2: I was trained for. That's what I thought. But once
Speaker 2: I got to law school and was practicing law, I
Speaker 2: realized I didn't go to law school to learn law.
Speaker 2: I went to law school to train my mind because
Speaker 2: I had never been taught how to think, and my
Speaker 2: mind was rabid and rampant with all manner of Wahalla
Speaker 2: and conflomeration. So I went to law school to learn
Speaker 2: how to think because I needed to learn how to think.
Speaker 2: And I know now I didn't know then when I was,
Speaker 2: you know, fifty seven thousand dollars in debt and we
Speaker 2: didn't have Biden's student forgiveness student law.
Speaker 1: I'm so mad, I said, Lord, I thank you for
Speaker 1: letting me be able to pay him in for but
Speaker 1: can I get my twenty k?
Speaker 2: No, I'm glad they're doing it now. You know, our
Speaker 2: twenty k or my forty seven thousand would be ninety
Speaker 2: thousand today.
Speaker 1: That's true.
Speaker 2: I'm glad, like you said, Grace helped me pay it off.
Speaker 2: But I also realized that I went to law school
Speaker 2: so that I could recognize the discordance between man's law
Speaker 2: and God's law. That's why I went to law school
Speaker 2: because some of the things that are legal are totally unkind, unloving,
Speaker 2: and to God, they just are and I didn't recognize that.
Speaker 2: And I didn't know that, and so once I got it,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, I'm not here to defend man's law.
Speaker 2: I'm here to teach God's law. That is my purpose.
Speaker 2: I am a teacher, and teacher in the most ancient
Speaker 2: sense is an educator, and to educate is not to
Speaker 2: put in, to jucate or draw out. Education is about
Speaker 2: drawing out what's in because we all have the divinity,
Speaker 2: we all have the wisdom, we all have what we
Speaker 2: need inside, and the educational process or the process of education,
Speaker 2: is to draw it out. Unfortunately, somebody didn't get the memo,
Speaker 2: and what they do is they pour in, pour it in,
Speaker 2: remember this and regurgitated, Remember this and regurgitated. Read this,
Speaker 2: and tell me what you think about what they said.
Speaker 2: And it doesn't allow us to use the creative origins
Speaker 2: of our mind. Your mind is so creative and so powerful.
Speaker 2: But we are educated to total line. We're educated to
Speaker 2: look for external validation, and therefore we lose our inner authority.
Speaker 2: I didn't learn none of that until that Fay forty
Speaker 2: seven thousand dollars to get lost.
Speaker 1: So are you saying we can be so educated and
Speaker 1: we don't use intuition.
Speaker 2: No, we don't use intuition. We don't trust ourselves. We
Speaker 2: are programmed and condition not to trust ourselves. You tell
Speaker 2: somebody something brilliant, and they say, who told you that?
Speaker 2: They ain't gonna let you do that? You can't think
Speaker 2: it's too good to be true. Yeah, you can't, you know.
Speaker 2: And so I just got to the place and maybe
Speaker 2: because I'm from Brooklyn and we're kind of rowdy, you know, where,
Speaker 2: I said, this is what I'm doing and just you know,
Speaker 2: allowing spirit to guide me along the way. I didn't
Speaker 2: choose this. I was born for this or this perpose.
Speaker 2: I was born to do what I do. And it's
Speaker 2: it's frightening. It's been really really hard sometimes to be
Speaker 2: the ones saying things. I remember years ago when I
Speaker 2: used to show up just in African clothes and speaking
Speaker 2: African culture and people are like, what can't You've got
Speaker 2: to be out your mind, And now you know, Michael
Speaker 2: Korus is making African clothes. Mm hmm. I was. I've
Speaker 2: always been out ahead of myself, out ahead of my time.
Speaker 2: But now to see youngins and people like you coming
Speaker 2: up and talking and you know, the exers and the
Speaker 2: zeers and the wires. So it's been really yeah, really
Speaker 2: it's been. It's been a really powerful journey and I'm
Speaker 2: glad to still be on it.
Speaker 1: You talk about the importance of development, personal development, Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to curate even who I follow on social media,
Speaker 1: but I've had to do some unfollowing because it's this
Speaker 1: conditioning of get the bag, get the bag, get the bag,
Speaker 1: get the bag. Even somebody close to me, I was
Speaker 1: telling him about this Mastermind course that I was gonna
Speaker 1: invest in, and he said, I'm so glad that you're
Speaker 1: talking about your brand development. He was like, what about
Speaker 1: that personal I said, no.
Speaker 2: You didn't.
Speaker 1: We were all about the grind. Have you heard the
Speaker 1: saying while you were sleep, I was grinding. No, I'm
Speaker 1: taken nap right. But that personal development that you were
Speaker 1: driving throughout the years. Why is personal development so important?
Speaker 2: Because it gives you the inner authority. That had the
Speaker 2: opportunity to go to Booie State University, one of the
Speaker 2: historically black colleges, and they had an incoming class of
Speaker 2: twelve hundred, and I spoke to them and two things
Speaker 2: happened that were shocking to me. First, they all knew
Speaker 2: who I was. These are eighteen nineteen year olds I
Speaker 2: didn't know they knew who I was. And not only
Speaker 2: did they know who I was, they were fans of
Speaker 2: fixing my life and they could tell me episodes and
Speaker 2: people and what happened to them people, and that was
Speaker 2: shocking to me. The next shocking thing to me was
Speaker 2: their willingness to be vulnerable. Young man stood up, thirty
Speaker 2: three years old, entering college for the first time, and
Speaker 2: talked about the fact that he was a victim of sex,
Speaker 2: that his mother was a drug addict, that she was
Speaker 2: trafficked and then he was trafficked. And he read yesterday
Speaker 2: I cried and that started him on its healing journey,
Speaker 2: his personal development. And another young woman stood up and
Speaker 2: talked about being sexually abused at the age of five,
Speaker 2: told her parents and they didn't believe her, and as
Speaker 2: a result of that, she developed OCD. And I said,
Speaker 2: to have OCDAL. Did they tell you had it? She said, no,
Speaker 2: they told me I had it. I said, and you
Speaker 2: believe them? She said, well, they diagnosed me. I said, well,
Speaker 2: what if your mind simply gave you something to focus
Speaker 2: on other than being raped, wouldn't that be wonderful? And
Speaker 2: now that you recognize that you were raped, you can
Speaker 2: now refocus your mind on something else. That's why personal
Speaker 2: development is important. We have to know what's true for us,
Speaker 2: what works for us, how we are influenced, what our
Speaker 2: triggers are, and We don't get that by other people
Speaker 2: telling us what to eat, what to drink, what to sleep,
Speaker 2: to want, what to wear. You have to do your
Speaker 2: work and the place that it shows up most frequently
Speaker 2: where we can begin to identify what's off, what's in balance,
Speaker 2: what we're feeling, what's triggering, is in our relationships. That's
Speaker 2: why I'm doing our spot because we need tools to
Speaker 2: build relationships. We need to develop to the degree where
Speaker 2: we can be whole and complete in or out of
Speaker 2: a relationship. Because we've been programmed, in conditioned to believe
Speaker 2: that somebody else makes us whole. Either it's your teacher
Speaker 2: or your boss, or your job, or your pasta or
Speaker 2: your usher membership or your choir membership, or it is
Speaker 2: the friends you got on Facebook. These are the things
Speaker 2: that make you whole. No, no, you come whole complete,
Speaker 2: and you need to learn how to trust that, honor
Speaker 2: that live, that integrate that so that when you get
Speaker 2: into a relationship, be it a love ship or in
Speaker 2: your family ships, or in your workships, whatever it is,
Speaker 2: that your whole, both feet on the ground solid, make
Speaker 2: me whole. First of all, I'm a woman and you're
Speaker 2: a man, and I don't want to grow a penis.
Speaker 2: So you keep your penis over there. I keep my
Speaker 2: huha over here. You know, yes, I don't. I want
Speaker 2: to come to you whole. I don't want to come
Speaker 2: to you broken. But because we're not taught how to
Speaker 2: develop our intuition, how to speak our truth, how to
Speaker 2: have a voice, how to stand up for ourselves lovingly
Speaker 2: and kindly honoring other people. Because we're not taught those things.
Speaker 2: We're taught to total line, kyletow keep the status quo. Please,
Speaker 2: other people seek external validation. We're whimps and cripples when
Speaker 2: it comes to relationships.
Speaker 1: Yes, I will agree. Oh, but you can't tell us
Speaker 1: nothing about getting the money, honey. We are experts on that,
Speaker 1: but are emotional intelligence.
Speaker 2: But when not experts on getting the money, because we
Speaker 2: think that money comes from outside of us, and the
Speaker 2: truth is money money. My own natural energy yield my
Speaker 2: own energy, what I'm thinking, what I'm feeling. Most people
Speaker 2: hate their jobs, and then they wonder why they broke.
Speaker 2: They work and work and work and work, and can
Speaker 2: never seem to get what they want. Because my own
Speaker 2: natural energy, what I'm thinking, what I'm feeling, how I'm living,
Speaker 2: yields me a return yields me a return. So we
Speaker 2: think that money comes from outside of us. It comes
Speaker 2: from inside of us. It just manifests outside and what
Speaker 2: you think about money, how you feel about money. That's
Speaker 2: why you got to grind. I don't have to grind.
Speaker 2: All I have to do is have a clear vision
Speaker 2: and a clear intention and be aligned with the energy
Speaker 2: freaky of what the desire.
Speaker 1: Wow, beautiful. Well, I want to say when you ended
Speaker 1: Fix my Life for the reason that you ended, courageous
Speaker 1: maybe is the word, because you were on an amazing
Speaker 1: network of fixing my life. And if I'm correct, I
Speaker 1: believe you ended it because you were like the energy
Speaker 1: that was coming from people on the outside. You was like,
Speaker 1: uh uh, I can't do that. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: allow people to do darts and social media everybody feels
Speaker 1: like they have access to throw darts at you. But
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you are on the R spot on
Speaker 1: Shondaland because I was like, oh, where's she going? We
Speaker 1: need you, we need you. Was that a hard decision
Speaker 1: to end Fix my Life? No?
Speaker 2: I woke up one morning in spirits say this is done,
Speaker 2: get out? I said, okay, easy? Is that I'm done.
Speaker 2: You know, the process of doing it. It was like
Speaker 2: I and then once I got that instruction, I swear
Speaker 2: everything and fix my life was It was a joy
Speaker 2: for me. I had a beautiful crew, I had a
Speaker 2: beautiful time. It was a you know, every day in
Speaker 2: my soul. I just thank Oprah Winfrey for having the
Speaker 2: courage to mount something like fix my Life, which had
Speaker 2: never been seen, and I hope we'll be seen in
Speaker 2: some iteration. It is.
Speaker 1: Well, let me tell you why it is, because memes forever.
Speaker 1: Do you know which one of them I'm about to
Speaker 1: call out?
Speaker 2: You know what? I didn't even know what a meme was.
Speaker 2: People had to tell me.
Speaker 1: I just learned, is a gift or Jiff, some Evan
Speaker 1: or gis se see. You know I didn't it was
Speaker 1: a gift, jiff, same thing. Okay, so I'm gonna do it.
Speaker 1: Y'all turn your volume down. But this was right here, not.
Speaker 2: On my watch.
Speaker 1: Watch, not on my watch. I was like, does she
Speaker 1: have T shirts, a mug, a candle? I do know
Speaker 1: you have Masterpiece Body Therapy, which is a Bathom body
Speaker 1: product that's traditionally made with sacred herbs, oils, love, and prayer.
Speaker 1: Not on my watch, But it let me know how
Speaker 1: clear you are on boundaries. Yeah, how you made us
Speaker 1: aware of boundaries also to be careful about what comes
Speaker 1: out of our mouths. You've stopped many people, don't you
Speaker 1: say that? On not on my watch? Yes? Yes, so
Speaker 1: boundaries and being careful about what comes out of our mouth.
Speaker 1: You kind of spoke to it a little bit. Why
Speaker 1: are you so clear about the importance of boundaries?
Speaker 2: Because people lied to me about my mother, and people violated,
Speaker 2: made choices for me that I didn't get to participate in.
Speaker 2: And because by people not having clear boundaries, safe boundaries,
Speaker 2: I was violated and abused as a child. Just a boundary,
Speaker 2: not a wall, not offence, but a boundary meaning allowing
Speaker 2: people to know what is and is not acceptable in
Speaker 2: your life. You got to do it, and you've got
Speaker 2: to hold your boundaries and they have to be solid
Speaker 2: and they have to keep you safe. And again, a boundaries,
Speaker 2: not a wall. There are two different things. I did
Speaker 2: a whole lesson on boundaries. Boundaries keep you safe and
Speaker 2: boundaries teach other people what they can expect from you.
Speaker 2: And they are a statement of what you expect from
Speaker 2: other people. And in this life you don't get what
Speaker 2: you ask for. You get what you expect. You always
Speaker 2: get what you expect. So if you expect people to
Speaker 2: honor you and to be kind and loving in a
Speaker 2: certain way, you've got to have clear boundaries. So that's
Speaker 2: very important to me. You know, I lived them from
Speaker 2: birth till thirty under a lie because people didn't have
Speaker 2: they violated my boundaries. I had a right to know
Speaker 2: who my mother was and the fact that she no
Speaker 2: longer inhabited a body, and for people to take that
Speaker 2: away from me and live a lie and my stepmother
Speaker 2: was my angel. I mean, it makes perfectly sense to me,
Speaker 2: but to mere fact that I lived a lie, it
Speaker 2: really you want to talk about something impacting your mental health,
Speaker 2: you know. So yeah, that's why boundaries are important. And
Speaker 2: the other thing is again, as a Native American, as
Speaker 2: a descendant of Africans, you know, in Lacotta tradition, my
Speaker 2: name is ya eo piapi, which means the people recognize
Speaker 2: her voice. And in my YEurope lineage, my name is
Speaker 2: eyam Lah, which means great mother. So I am the
Speaker 2: great mother of whom people recognize my voice. Traditions and
Speaker 2: my culture they all blend together. But in both of
Speaker 2: those traditions, we believe that the essence and the power
Speaker 2: of the soul comes through the voice. You know, if
Speaker 2: you go to any Native American celebration ceremony, you really
Speaker 2: hear words, you hear sounds, you know, hey, oh yea.
Speaker 2: And then in African culture, everything is a song. Everything
Speaker 2: is a song, even in African American culture. You know
Speaker 2: when the pastor gets into that sing song in the
Speaker 2: Lord is with you, ha, you know, yes, oh and on.
Speaker 2: You know, because of the power of the soul that
Speaker 2: comes through the voice. So we have to be much
Speaker 2: more mindful of what's coming out of our mouth because
Speaker 2: the mouth is a wound, and what comes out of
Speaker 2: it you're giving birth to. So when you're speaking, I'm tired,
Speaker 2: I'm crazy, you get all my nerves, I'm broke, I
Speaker 2: don't want You're given births. So if we start to
Speaker 2: think of our mouth as a womb that is perpetually
Speaker 2: given birth, we want to be careful. We don't want
Speaker 2: to have you know, deformed children and mentally had the
Speaker 2: cap children and you know, meaning with the words that
Speaker 2: we're speaking, because they're going to come to life, They're
Speaker 2: going to come to life. People say all the time,
Speaker 2: I'm broke, I'm broken, But no, you're not broke. You're
Speaker 2: temporarily out of cash. Because when you say i'm broke,
Speaker 2: you're talking about your being. So that could be a
Speaker 2: broken heart or broken mind, a broken leg, a broken body,
Speaker 2: a broken home. Stop saying not yes, I'm confused. No, no, no,
Speaker 2: I'm not aware in this moment of what's the best
Speaker 2: thing for me to do. Stop saying you confuse, because
Speaker 2: that's a baby that you just birthed about the womb
Speaker 2: you know of your tongue.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, we speak our future. I probably say it
Speaker 1: every other podcast. But a friend of mine brought to
Speaker 1: my attention the meaning of the word future. He said, Michelle,
Speaker 1: what do you think the word future means? I said,
Speaker 1: something to come. He said, no, I just learned what
Speaker 1: it meant. I said, I hate that you're almost forty
Speaker 1: and you're just now learning what the work future means.
Speaker 1: But it's exactly what you're saying, miss Yanla. The work
Speaker 1: future means the time or period of time following the
Speaker 1: moment of speaking or writing.
Speaker 2: That's right, it's in the or thinking or thinking. Yeah,
Speaker 2: cause thank your future too. You can.
Speaker 1: You have been absolutely amazing. I'm thinking I said, I
Speaker 1: just want to come to your house, sit at your feet,
Speaker 1: and should I say cook for you. I don't want
Speaker 1: you to have to do nothing.
Speaker 2: No, you come to my house. I'm gonna cook for
Speaker 2: you anytime on the deck. We'll go sit on the
Speaker 2: deck in piece and freedom or jump around and my
Speaker 2: grandson will interrupt our conversation every forty five seconds.
Speaker 1: I am here for it all, Miss Eana Vinzen, Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for checking in with us.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: I have been on the verge of tears, but I'm like,
Speaker 1: just hold it together.
Speaker 2: But thank you.
Speaker 1: I'll actual thank you.
Speaker 2: Thank you for being so willing to be authentic and vulnerable,
Speaker 2: and thank you for giving a voice to our healing,
Speaker 2: our growth, our development as women, as people of color,
Speaker 2: and using yourself as an example. Thank you for that
Speaker 2: and for that purpose you were born. Yes you can sing,
Speaker 2: and yes you can do lots of other things, but
Speaker 2: the first scripture or the first sacred word in the
Speaker 2: world was the spoken word. So this podcasts have become bibles,
Speaker 2: and m for being a Bible that somebody can read
Speaker 2: every single day.
Speaker 1: Well we hear at checking in. We love you, everybody
Speaker 1: make sure that you also head over to Shondaland Audio
Speaker 1: and listen to the our Spot podcast. Inner Vision Innervision
Speaker 1: is her coaching ministry, It's her life's ministry. We love
Speaker 1: you over here. We love you so much. I honor
Speaker 1: you and thank you for speaking in to me and
Speaker 1: to millions of others by affirming us and get in
Speaker 1: our lives right. We love you so much, y'all. O. MG,
Speaker 1: mouth drop, y'all.
Speaker 2: Wasn't this awesome? Honey? I laughed?
Speaker 1: I cried. I was just sitting here in pure awe
Speaker 1: of how much fun we just had with Iyanla fan zend. Okay, Oh,
Speaker 1: weren't y'all like blessed? I'm gonna do everything she said? Well,
Speaker 1: she said, ask your mother about your love story, and
Speaker 1: that you get what you expect. Wow, And that the
Speaker 1: mouth is a womb. Okay, she said so much. And
Speaker 1: I loved how she said. We don't want to affirm
Speaker 1: anything wrong. We don't want to affirm it. Like she said,
Speaker 1: it don't mean that you're a bad person. It don't
Speaker 1: mean that you're wrong. Maybe just this response or maybe
Speaker 1: your interpretation of what someone said or what someone did
Speaker 1: was wrong, and it's Okay, y'all, I'm not gonna say
Speaker 1: too much. Re listen to this episode if you have to.
Speaker 1: There's not much I can say other than I am
Speaker 1: truly humbled that she graced us today. And I'm truly
Speaker 1: humbled that you guys took the time out to listen.
Speaker 1: Every week, y'all, tune in every week, y'all check in.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: I gotta go and absorb all this goodness we just had,
Speaker 1: all right, and I don't want to ruin it by
Speaker 1: trying to do what I normally do at the end
Speaker 1: of an episode. Let me go. I gotta go check
Speaker 1: in with myself right now. I love y'all so.
Speaker 2: Much by.
Speaker 1: Checking In with Michelle Williams is a production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: and The Black Effect. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
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