I'm Oprah Winfrey. Welcome to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast.
I believe that one of the most valuable gifts you can give yourself is time, taking time to be more fully present.
Your journey to become more inspired and connected to the deeper world around us starts right now.
Iama Van Zant was born in Brooklyn in 1953.
Actually, she was born with the name Rhonda Harris.
More on that a little later.
Her mother, an alcoholic, died when she was two, and she was sent to live with her grandmother.
Iama says her childhood was filled with fear.
She was raped at age nine.
She gave birth at age 14 and was a mother of three by the time she was 21.
But after she saw an ad for a local college while riding a bus, she enrolled and later ended up going to law school.
But after three years as a public defender in Philadelphia, Iama felt a higher calling.
She became an ordained minister and published her first book, starting a new career as an author, a relationship expert, and spiritual teacher.
You know, what we're trying to do with this network is actually the heart and soul of what Super Soul Sunday is all about.
And I am so honored to have you to be a part of that because from day one you understood that that's what I was trying to do.
Day one, I had every TV in the house on.
You said I'm going to try to help you birth this baby.
And don't you think it's fortuitous that at this time in our lives we come together?
So let me just refresh everybody.
Iana was on our show back in the 90s.
Iana and Dr. Phil started about the same time.
Iana decided to do her own show and she left.
She'd come to us and wanted to do a show.
I wasn't ready. She was ready.
You went and did your own show.
I went into the wonderfulness.
Every time I think about you and I speak a lot about you with our friend Maya Angelou.
She just says that it is of divine order that God was ready at this particular time for this to happen with you and I.
And I think had it not happened the way it happened it wouldn't be so sweet right now.
The many healings, the many lessons, the growth.
Had it not happened the way it happened we don't know if this could have happened.
That's why I always say all things are lessons that God would have us learn.
So the lessons that I learned by going to do television with another network another producer woke me up.
Yeah it was it shook me to my core.
Yeah and I had no. Let's break this down though what you're talking about basically is you went to do another show.
Yes. And so you're all now in that.
Yes caught up in that.
And if I can say hurt and guilty about the way I left here I have to say it hurt that I didn't understand what I had done and guilty because my drug of choice my story is I always do the wrong thing.
So when you said bless you go forward.
Yes that's not what I heard.
What I heard was you did the wrong thing and you're being punished.
Wow. So I'm going off now to do a new show with a vision feeling guilty thinking I had hurt you or disappointed you let you down.
And then going over here with folk who had a whole other agenda that I didn't know about.
So I was in a weakened state and didn't realize it.
If I would have had any sense I would have sat in the corner.
But how do you take that lesson and apply it to everyone else because most people aren't going to have people offering them television shows.
It doesn't matter if it's a marriage if it's a ham sandwich.
With cheese right with cheese on sourdough bread.
Yeah lots of mayonnaise and a pickle.
It doesn't matter what it is.
Here's the lesson. When you find yourself in a new situation a new circumstance a new life experience or everything that requires healing is going to rush to the surface.
And if you don't take a minute to breathe to gather yourself to pray you will do what you've always done.
So you've got to be clear enough grounded enough centered enough to say how am I going to handle it this time.
That's right. So the lesson is pause.
OK. We go from being 20 to 30 without a pause 30 to 40 without a pause.
We go from one job to the next from one bed to the next from one every pause boo.
Take a breath pause.
And that's particularly women particularly make this mistake over and over and over again with relationships and men too.
You get out of one and you go into the next and you are now into the next one because it looks different or looks bigger or the grass is greener.
You think that it's different and you bring all your old stuff to it.
It took me 40 years to realize that I was trying to get my father's approval and acceptance.
One man 40 years and I kept reliving my issues with my father over and over and over.
One day my soul just opened up and the Holy Spirit said you can't get your daddy to love you like that.
What you mean. So that's when I had to take a pause and look at it and it's the truth Oprah it's Facing the truth is hard.
It is painful as hell.
Excuse me Sunday. Excuse a super so truth will set you free.
But you have to endure the labor pains of birthing it.
One of the reasons why I wanted to have you here on this Sunday is because the fact that we've come together and this new show that you have created I will tell you when I saw the first episode I said to myself that's the best thing I have ever seen on television and that includes my 25 years of doing
it. And that's saying a lot because I've had some moments that you know I saw.
That is there's something about this new show that actually takes in my opinion what you do what we're trying to do with this network and just the whole vision of lifting people up and allowing them to step into the possibilities of themself takes it to another level.
Well it's it's doing the work out loud.
Yeah doing the work out loud making it practical.
Yes and it's hard work.
It's taking the spiritual and making it practical.
Yeah taking intellectual concept and construct and bringing it to the everyday person.
Because I say I want people to live better lives.
Yeah yeah you're out there literally in the street helping them do it.
Well and doing it based on what I know to be true.
Yeah. Because you have lived most of it.
Most like me you've lived on.
You've had every conversation imaginable.
So you laid the foundation for 25 years.
Now you're giving the platform to the world including me to say now let's make this talk operational.
Yes. At a time when people are looking.
Oh my God. Not are people just looking but are wanting wanting.
Yeah. And and willing and willing and willing and willing and willing and willing to go there.
This is what's so great.
I read all of your Facebook posts and people have been saying on Facebook you know I love Super Soul Sunday.
I get this but how do I make it real in my own life and something you shared on a life class recently from a Course in Miracles all lessons or things the lessons that God would have you learn.
Now don't you think that that is fundamental in people being able to take the spiritual and making it operational.
Yeah. Once you realize that there is nothing happening that God isn't in.
That God isn't in. Everything.
You'll break down with boo boo.
Yeah. You know. OK OK.
Let's start here. What is your definition of God then.
Because all there is that's my definition all there is everything.
All there is took me a long time to learn that because that's what that I had God.
But when you were acting ugly you didn't have none.
You were one of those people one of them.
I was one of them. I grew up believing that I was wretched born in sin and that I was headed straight for hell.
Because I wanted to polish my fingernails.
Yes. And all of the.
Do you know. Yes. Do you know my sister who I discovered just last year she was telling me the story that when she was taken to her home and finally adopted.
This makes me want to weep that the very first day she arrives on the step as a seven year old girl a little girl comes from next door and wants to play with her takes her to her house and paints her fingernails and she was beaten by her adoptive mother that day because her fingernails were painted.
I don't know a God that wants to beat you because your fingernails and part.
Well I don't know a God that wants you to suffer and be wretched.
I don't know a God that doesn't forgive that won't let you have it because you weren't paying right.
Yeah. So but they didn't know any better.
I call it God in a box.
Yeah God in a box and churchy entity churchy entity.
What is that. It's when you go to the church and you do all of the religious ceremonies and rituals and everything and you think that is what's going to build your intimate your relationship with God.
Yeah. And then you go home and you mean it in a wet cat.
You're miserable in your spirit.
You do the prayer you do the everything in church and you try to bring church home but church wears off around six p .m.
on Tuesday. And let me say I love the Lord.
I love church. But there's a truth here that's not being told.
It's just not being told.
Which is God wants an intimate relationship with you whether you do it at first A .M.
me or St. Martha's or whether you do it in your heart.
God wants you to smile at other people because that's a demonstration of love.
If you've never opened the Bible.
God wants you to be good in your soul and your spirit and trust God for every step whether or not you sing in a choir.
Yeah. Now on page 136 my relationship with God was hit and miss it best.
My marriage was on the verge of being a mess.
My relationship with myself was a complete disaster and I was slated to appear on Oprah to talk about things that I was still trying to master myself.
The reason I love this so much is because when your relationship with God is hit or miss.
So is your life. That's right.
And I had become spiritual lazy and I talk about that.
I had let the ways of the world so occupy me.
I got to be up at six.
I got to be here. I got to do this.
I got to do that. And I made time for everything.
The husband the kids whatever.
And that's OK. I pray tomorrow.
You know or OK I don't have time right now to read the scripture.
Yeah or I can't be meditation.
I can't be still I can't be still pause.
Yeah you know. And then I realized and this happened to me on the plane coming here.
Yes. The plane pulled back back though pulled into the runway got to the end of the runway to take off and you know what it did.
It stopped. I said even this great big old plane takes a pause before it takes off.
Wow on the plane. I love God because God is bringing stuff like that.
Now that was a deep lesson.
I'm on the plane just a weeping.
I get that. I'm so sorry I have pause.
I have it. You know how the lesson came to me.
It came to me several years ago.
I had gotten three golden retrievers at one time and I had Luke Leila and Gracie and Gracie was a dog who never paused.
She was always you know we were always always the question where's Gracie.
Where is Gracie. Where's Gracie.
And one day Gracie went out and the caretaker for Gracie was playing ball Gracie.
The ball got stuck in Gracie's mouth and Gracie died.
The instant I saw Gracie and I come running they go you know Miss Winfrey something's happened.
One of the dogs the instant I saw Gracie lying on the ground I knew that that would be me.
If I didn't start. That's right.
Oh wow. Yeah. You got it on the plane.
Gracie. Grace. Grace brought it to you.
Gracie was a moment of grace.
I just the instant I saw the dog.
I thought that's going to be you.
And see that is how life operates when you are willing and when you are open.
Who would have thought that your dead dog would be a message to you.
Yes. Who would have thought that sitting at the end of the roadway.
Yeah. And what's happening in our world is people are having more and more of these aha moments more and more of these realizations.
But I think people the reason we have this kind of forum is so that people can begin to trust the messages and know that it's happening and you must trust them.
You must pay attention.
You must pay attention.
Yeah. Who was Rhonda Harris.
That is who I was in my former life.
She is a survivor. She is a very.
resourceful. Broken.
Wounded. Sorrowful soul.
Rhonda Harris is a Yawla Van Zant's birth name.
She renamed herself a Yawla in her late 20s as a symbol of letting her old self go in order to be born anew.
But Rhonda Harris was never forgotten.
She is the reason I am sitting here today.
Because had it not been for her that aspect of me.
I would never survive the abuse the abandonment the rejection.
Rhonda Harris was with me when my father beat the skin off my back.
She was there when my grandmother abused me when my uncle raped me when my brother abandoned me.
She was there when I got pregnant at 14.
She was there when I got on the subway in New York to ride to Manhattan to identify my dead child's body.
When I was 15 she was there.
She was there when nobody else was there.
And then as a Yawla emerged Rhonda no longer fit who I had become.
So I had to give her another job.
I had to bury her but not in the ground hating her hiding her diminishing her but bury her down.
OK Boo you don't get to run this anymore.
Yeah does there come a time when that aspect of ourselves that is no longer working needs to be buried.
Oh yes absolutely. Yeah not buried again not thrown down in the gown and cast off because you must must be grateful that you had that in order to get through all.
Absolutely. Yeah absolutely.
Did you actually see it as a different personality a different side.
I see it as a different side.
An aspect of who I Rhonda's here.
She's here you know probably sucking her teeth and rolling her eyes not believing that any of this is real and that I don't deserve any of it.
But since she's in her place now Yawla can just say to her it's all right boo I got this.
When did you bury her.
I must have been about 28 29.
When I realized that the life that I was living was not the truth of who I was.
When I was in sorrow and suffering.
Wow. When I was an attorney but still living paycheck to paycheck.
And what is that that course in miracles quote that if you're not at peace.
I must have decided wrongly because I am not at peace because God is in all things universal energy.
The divine force of life wants the best for me.
What's the best for us love.
There's no way that I came out of the projects off welfare to go to college and law school and to end up in a house with no furniture with my children eating fast food off the floor.
Wow. I had to go through that to get here.
Yeah. But when I was there I had to look at that and said this need not be this need not be.
Yeah. And the reason you know you're completely out of alignment is because you're not at peace.
I'm not at peace. You're not at peace.
That's the key paycheck to paycheck to paycheck to pay suffering.
Welfare mentality with a million dollar life.
Get out. Welfare mentality.
I was making a million dollars and still had that mentality of living paycheck to paycheck.
And my beloved teacher.
Jamiya said to me. Have you noticed that we have to have no money in order to get money.
My daughter Jamiya.
Iyanla's oldest daughter Jamiya was her confidant her rock.
And she says her greatest teacher Jamiya died of cancer at just 30 years old.
But Jamiya says that during her short life her daughter opened her eyes her heart and her mind like no one else.
She said have you noticed that we have to have no money in order to get money.
She said what is that about.
And I said I don't know but it ends today.
That was Rhonda really emerging in my life and showing me that old way.
That old way of being.
Yes. So I had to say to her beloved it's we can have it all.
Yes. You had a born again moment moment and had to go through the labor pains of facing the truth.
And the truth is you are not living the life that's in alignment with who you are today.
You're living the life the generational patterns the generational pathology of who you used to be.
Let's talk about the generational pathology.
Most people are not even aware of you just carry it forward.
You do what was done.
You do what you saw.
You do what you heard.
And some of it even though you say I'm not going to do that.
That's right. I'm not going to be like my mom.
I'm not going to be like my daddy.
I'm never going to do that to my kids.
I'm never going to have to do it.
You do it because it's in your DNA.
That's what you know.
That's what you know.
My my mother was the other woman.
She was the other woman.
She lived with my father in his mother's house and my father and his wife lived around the corner.
She had two children with a married man.
He denied her. He hid her.
He dishonored her. And she loved him.
She loved him. And then you.
How did you take that on.
I learned it in the womb.
I marinated in a toxic womb.
I took it on her sorrow her sadness her guilt.
Guilt was my drug of choice.
As I said to you I did something wrong.
I did the bad thing.
It was playing in my head all of the time.
All of my life. It was Rhonda's mantra.
I'm bad. I'm wrong.
I'm guilty. So unconsciously unknowingly I constantly did things becoming pregnant at 14.
You know stealing lying the people that I would surround myself with.
So that ultimately I would feel guilty and I would be bad.
It was the way the energy lived in my body.
So for people who are on the path to trying to discover why they are where they are trying to come to some sense of self awareness trying to move forward.
It's important to understand what the past gave to you as much as you can.
But the way you can tell what and then step out of you is look at your patterns.
Look at what you do.
You don't have to look at your mama.
Just be clear about what you do.
Pause and pay attention.
And now here was the real kicker for me is my mother my natural birth mother was dead and nobody bothered to tell me.
So I didn't have that portion of my history.
And my stepmother was a traditional quiet.
You know don't talk about that kind of thing.
And so I didn't even know the truth.
So I was living a lie for so long and that's what I did in my own life.
I live many lives. I'm happy at home.
I feel good. Oh everything is wonderful.
I was living a lie.
And that is why you're so able to call it out.
Because you see it.
Yes. I can smell a lie a foot away.
Yeah. You know people always say to me how did you know that.
God told me. You say that you are.
I read this that you are not a clairvoyant but you're clairhearant.
Clairaudient. I do hear.
Yeah. I hear beneath the words.
And it's sometimes I noticed you doing it in life class with that woman who was sitting right over there.
Oh buddy. Yeah. She stood up and you said what I hear you saying.
And I was like I don't hear a saying.
I hear a saying what you just said.
And you said what I hear.
What I'm hearing. Yeah.
Is that there are some mother issues.
And I was saying she or the world or mother.
It's hard sometimes because it's like I say it's the Holy Spirit will hit me in the back of my head and say say that you know.
And it just comes out and I'm sometimes I'm shocked by itself.
I'm like OK. Now what you're going to do with this.
And people hear it.
If they're willing and the heart is open and God is on their side they will receive it.
Yeah. And I know they receive it.
They'll do one or two things.
They'll laugh or they'll cry.
When you are out on the road with the yamla fix my life before you are you.
You seem to be in every circumstance.
And now I think I've seen one, two, three, four episodes.
You seem to be prayed up when you walk.
Oh baby. I have to be.
It's not me. This is my gift.
This is for this reason I was born.
I get that it's not me.
And I'm so afraid. I will say afraid of the drug of celebrity fame and fortune.
I'm afraid of that because I know the ruthlessness of the ego.
I know the ruthlessness of the.
But you've already been there.
Yeah. But it doesn't.
He wants to get me.
You know why? Because if he gets me it will look like God didn't win because God saved me for this God saved me.
I feel that so strongly.
I want to share the last email you sent to me that made me weep.
OK. OK. This is dated July 16th and it's an email from you called a new awareness.
I'm going to share it.
OK. Parts of it. You say my lady oh please forgive me if I ramble.
I'm just back from Miami where we shot a long long day with Evelyn Lozada.
Star basketball wives and the wife of bad boy Chag Ocho Sinko.
As I sat holding Evelyn in my arms she who has portrayed herself to be a foul mouthed ill tempered raging maniac.
I finally got that there is something bigger than we could have ever imagined going on here.
I'm not sure what to call it or if it has a name at all for that matter.
What I know for sure is that what the world is about to see in a young love fix my life is so enormous that I can hardly contain my humble gratitude for the grace in which I stand.
Oh. Oh indeed has a vision and a direction to facilitate healing in the world.
Oh my God. You write for this moment I was born.
I only wish Jimmy I was here to see it.
To be in it with me.
I know she is with me in spirit.
So now I weep. I know it's not been an easy road.
I know you've taken a lot of heat and that there are many many naysayers not to mention haters.
What I really want to say is this is not about me at all.
This may not even be about you.
This is about women all women particularly women of African descent.
Bringing a depth and power of humanity and healing into the world in a way that is sure to have a ripple effect.
When I was praying the other day before we started the shoot I was led to the same scripture that was given to me when I was ordained 16 years ago.
Isaiah 61 the spirit of the sovereign Lord is upon me for the Lord has anointed me to bring good news.
Really. Thank you for that.
I think that. Like I said to you I have to stay there.
I left the ego. You have to stay there.
I have to stay right there.
Well let me just tell you what that moment did for me.
This has not been an easy climb.
But I have tried to hold on to the vision.
I've had to expand the vision do some things that I didn't think I would ever do.
But trying just to hold on to the vision and literally this show that we're doing right now Super Soul Sunday is the heart of that vision.
And the work that you are doing is the soul of that vision.
It is the manifestation of what I had in mind when I said all right.
I'm going to say yes to the network.
So getting this letter from you on July 16th was it was like it was like a voice of God.
It was literally God speaking through you saying you're doing it.
You're doing it. You're doing exactly what you set out to do.
And then I saw those shows.
I mean I saw those shows that you that you are doing and have done and that you know I realized that it is bigger than me.
It's bigger than you and that to be able to offer that in such a way that people can see it.
And that's really what it is.
It's an offering. What Super Soul Sunday does what I know young love fix my life is going to do.
It's going to validate people's stories people who haven't been seen who haven't been heard.
And again it's young love fix my life but I don't do the fix and the people do the fix and God does the fix.
You know Mary Ann Williamson's prayer.
Where would you have me go.
Yes. What would you have me do.
What would you have me say to whom.
Do you think that everything that has happened to you that you write so beautifully and eloquently about.
And I can feel your the beating of your heart and peace from broken pieces.
Do you think all of that was to bring you to the space where you can.
You can be here for people in a way that you weren't before all things lessons that God would have me learn.
And you know how I write about it in the book.
I say every Sunday morning God has a jazz brunch for souls.
Yes. Coming human. Yeah.
And they go to that brunch and God reads out all of the life assignments of humans that are going to be born on earth.
And the souls pick an assignment meaning they pick a life that they're going to come into body to manifest and God when he has a really hard task he winks over at you and says you know like this is the assignment I want you to take.
Yeah. So the soul that was going to become Rhonda Harris was sitting there at the jazz brunch and God winked at her and then he brought her up and he told her you're going to be born.
A black female in a time when being black or female isn't really easy.
You're going to be born to an alcoholic mother and a womanizing father.
You're going to be born in a situation where you may be physically abused.
God tells us he tells us we get the life assignment and he says this is what I want you to know.
I want you to know that you've got to hold on to me.
Yes. I want you to know that you've got to learn forgiveness and when I got abandoned and treated badly in home I didn't remember that I could always reach out to God.
But at some point. You know this.
Those things that God whispered in your ear kick in.
Yeah. And you get to choose.
Yeah. Either I'm going to do this as hard as it is or I'm going to do that.
I'm going to pick up a needle.
I'm going to stay ignorant.
I'm going to drink.
I'm going to cuss. I'm going to stay angry or I'm going to say father into my hands.
I commit me. Yeah. My soul my life.
Yeah. And that's what I did.
It is understanding the surrender.
Oh man. And that that really is all there.
There needs to be. See people.
People think surrender looks like this.
Yes. And it looks like that.
Yes. It does. This is it does.
It looks like that.
I surrender. Yeah. Oh.
Good thing it's Sunday.
I know that was my greatest lesson.
Surrender. Let me tell you.
Let me confess. Yeah.
I always supported on.
Yeah. From day one.
And everybody was saying to me you need to go get on on.
You need to go get on on.
But I've learned that what God has for me.
Yes. It is for me. We had not yet had our conversation.
No. And then the day my son said to me, ma, how come you haven't called on?
You need to call Oprah.
Like we the schoolgirls.
You need to call over.
You need to go do something on own because you know what they trying to do.
And I said to him, Damon, I ain't calling nobody.
I said when it's time they going to call.
Three days later. No.
Three days later, Amy called me to come do our hard conversation.
I promise you. Three days later, surrender what God has for me.
It is for me. And I knew even that conversation, we needed to have it.
But it wasn't for us.
It was for the world.
Yes. Show that you can have a breakdown.
You can have a misunderstanding.
And there are steps in the process.
And people thought we had planned it.
People thought we talked about it afterwards.
We never said another word.
Never said another word.
And then it's so interesting you say that, which you always get to see that whole show after this.
But Maya says that all the time.
You think you did it for yourselves, but you did it for everybody.
You were able to show the rest of you know why your grandmother did the work for this to happen.
She picked cotton. She nursed babies.
She scrubbed floors.
And I know it was hard.
I wept my little heart out like a fool when I started making her own.
But I could feel your spirit.
You know, I would send you little things.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Your grandmother worked for this, Oprah.
She did. Now, I was bringing up the grandmother.
She worked for this.
Oh, so did mine. Stop right.
I can let me clean myself up.
Yeah. Thank you. I'm Oprah Winfrey, and you've been listening to Super Soul Conversations podcast.
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If you haven't yet, go to Apple podcast and subscribe rate and review this podcast.
Join me next week for another Super Soul Conversation.
Thank you for listening.
