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Finally some positive feedback for Iyanla. After DMX going off on her and Sheree Whitfield complaining about her recent appearance on Iyanla: Fix My Life, the OWN Network show is reaping rewards with the viewers, particularly those in African-American households, according to Nielsen. Moreover, reports Target Market News, Life With La Toya, the reality show tracking LaToya Jackson (who seems to be making a Kardashian-like career out of being on multiple reality programs), was a favorite on the Top 25 chart of black viewers’ favorite shows for the week ending April 14. Iyanla: Fix My Life and Life With La Toya were the only adult-oriented Saturday night shows on the list, reports the site.

Looking at other numbers, Bravo was the week’s most watched cable network and BET had 4.8 million across four shows, such as The Game, followed by VH1′s 4.4 million for four shows.

Fewer African Americans were viewing TV for the week, however. The total number of viewers watching the Top 25, according to Nielsen, was 27.3 million, or three percent less than the previous week,” reports Target Market News.

The top shows for the week among African Americans were the two episodes of American Idol, The Voice, and Dancing With The Stars.

Haven’t been tuning in to LaToya’s show? (We know you’re watching Iyanla!) Here’s a teaser for the next episode of Life With LaToya. Are you tuning in?

Delusional doesn’t even scratch the surface of what DMX’s real issue is, but it’s a pretty safe description to use for a man who, with so many issues of his own that need fixing, calls someone who tries to help him “toxic.”

That’s the word X used to describe Iyanla Vanzant following the airing of his episode on “Iyanla Fix My Life” last Saturday. We already knew the rapper was upset when his publicist put out a statement on Monday morning saying:

“DMX agreed to be a guest on ‘Iyanla: Fix My Life’ with the understanding that she would be helping his relationships with his ten children. When he arrived for the taping, most of the content was focused on his struggles with drugs and poor parenting. Iyanla did not “fix” DMX’s life just made his image worse, and does not have DMX’s personal written consent to use the footage.”

Now DMX is moving one step further with that last allegation, exploring his legal options to get footage of his “Fix My Life” episode removed from the OWN network altogether. He told TMZ Iyanla was only supposed to ask him about his issues with women, not drugs, and he was totally caught off guard by the prodding into his addiction.

“Iyanla set the whole thing up to make me look bad for ratings. That lady is toxic … My last words to her were that she can suck my d**k and she still can.”

As much of a fan as I am of Iyanla, I do know that she can be preachy, but toxic? Sounds to me like he’s projecting his own mess onto someone else. While it may be true that DMX came to Iyanla about women rather than his children, that right there says he has some serious issues if he’s putting random groupies before his kids. And even if the episode stuck to his addiction to women, did he nor his publicist not think his addiction to drugs was going to be discussed as a factor there as well?

The bottom line appears to be DMX just wasn’t ready to do the work, as Iyanla would say. And the response he’s giving to the episode is only discrediting his claims that Iyanla is the one making him look bad and showing no one can do that better than himself.

Do you think DMX has any legal leg to stand on in getting his footage removed from OWN?

Source: WENN

From Essence

When Iyanla Vanzant sits down with DMX, everyone had better tune in with a notebook and pencil because it’s going to be explosive. Vanzant meets the embattled rapper on the season 2 premiere of Iyanla: Fix My Life to offer “support” around his issues with drug abuse, women, his extensive arrest record (“roughly 30 times,” he tells her), and his relationship with his family, particularly his son.

Vanzant spoke to ESSENCE.com about the episode, where she thinks DMX went wrong, and what we can all learn from him.

On where she thinks DMX went wrong in his life:

I don’t think that he went wrong. All of us have ways in which we mask and cover our pain. This is a man who is in a tremendous amount of pain. Some of us eat; some of us shop or eat chocolate. What he is doing is a less socially acceptable way to mask and cover his pain because he doesn’t have the skills and the tools to deal with it otherwise. So I don’t think he went wrong, it’s just a defense mechanism.

The breakthrough moment:

Sometimes you go on to do one thing and something else unfolds. When you’re dealing with the ravages of long-term drug abuse you’re also dealing with the impact of the entire ecology of the environment. What we discovered was that the greatest healing was for his son Xavier who had not had the ability to address what he was feeling about his father. Xavier really got the biggest breakthrough.

This was a really good interview and you can read the rest over at Essence.com.  While this episode is clearly going to give us every level of entertainment we need, it is possibly the chance for us to learn something about ourselves and not just using it as a moment to laugh at someone else’s situation.

The second season of Iyanla: Fix My Life premieres tonight at 9p ET on OWN. Will you be watching?

Source: AP Images

I don’t want to be blasphemous, but I can’t help feeling like Iyanla is the way, the truth, and the life every time I catch her show on OWN — especially after she had that cheating pastor prostrating himself in the sanctuary on Saturday night’s episode. Iyanla has a way of non-judgmentally calling people out on their mess and helping them uncover their truth like a good life coach should and there are more people than she could ever possibly help who are in need of her services.

After seeing Iyanla work with Evelyn Lozada and checking out clips of her upcoming episode with Maia Campbell this weekend, I can’t help but think about the slew of other celebs who she can lead to a breakthrough. It’s not easy talking through your issues on-camera, but since these people are putting their messy business out there anyway, they might as well clean it up in front of the public too.

Check out this list of celebs who should be tweeting #IyanlaFixMyLife.

By now everyone knows what a game changer Iyana Vanzant’s new show “Fix My Life” will be for Orpah’s OWN network. Kicking off the season with “Basketball Wives” Evelyn Lozada; she brought in record ratings for the channel, but with that recognition came backlash that the network was exploiting the reality TV star’s life, much like VH1. In an interview with The Grio, Ms. Vanzant completely rejected that notion.

“The show was done prior to the upheaval with her and Chad, and it was scheduled to be the third show, not the first show,” the life coach explained. “The reason it was the first show was, because of the upheaval with her and Chad, it was timely…And so, you know, at my age, I can’t care what people say, and most of it, I forget.”

“She wrote me, just like every other guest. That’s an indication of willingness.”

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Photo by: Johnny Louis/wenn

No one who was raised by humans was brought up by perfect parents. But the spectrum of what “not perfect” is varies greatly from household to household. Not perfect could mean a mother and a father who simply made a few expected mistakes here and there, or individuals who worked all the time and were never there for the moments and lessons that counted. It could characterize parents who were never supportive or showed affection or others who may have been verbally, physically, or even sexually abusive. The increase in severity among these examples isn’t difficult to see, but whether you simply didn’t get enough time with your parents or received too much inappropriate attention from them, these experiences influence who we become, for better or worse. The question is, how long are you allowed to blame your upbringing for the poor choices you’ve yet to take responsibility for as an adult?

I’ve thought about this idea off-and-on for a while but never came to a conclusive answer, mostly due to the fact that although anyone over the age of 18 can rightfully call themselves a grown up, it doesn’t mean that they have in fact grown up and dealt with certain aspects of their rearing. This topic once again popped in my mind last night and the night before while watching Evelyn Lozada’s special on Iyanla Vanzant’s (incredible) new show, “Fix My Life,” as virtually every poor decision we’ve seen Ev make on “Basketball Wives,” and many before, was traced back to her relationship with her parents. Evelyn’s atrocious temper and violent ways with women were found to be rooted in the way she watched her own mother handle conflict, and her acceptance of Chad, and other men’s, cheating was said to be a direct result of her father not being in her life, and by extension, a generational curse evidenced by the fact that Evelyn’s father cheated on her mother while she was pregnant with her. Though I’ve never been a fan of the cliché way in which every decision one makes in adulthood is whittled down to an experience from their childhood, after watching these back-to-back specials, I’ve come to see Iyanla is the absolute truth (I’d add the way and the life if it weren’t blasphemous), so I’d never try to discredit her psychological expertise as a life coach. Still, I can’t help but feel like these childhood connections come to be used as a crutch for people who simply have not acknowledged the err of their own ways.

The thing is, you know when you’re doing something wrong — or at least something that is yielding unpleasant results in your life — even if you don’t know why. Just using the details of Evelyn’s life she exposed last night as a springboard, when you wind up pregnant at 16 by a boy who was cheating on you, I would think a little light bulb would go off in your head that would make you say, “I don’t want to experience hurt like this again. An easy way to prevent a repeat situation would be not to jump into bed with men who don’t value me.” Trust me, I know this is easier said than done. But there’s a huge difference in not knowing better so you can’t do better and knowing that what you’re doing is wrong, but not having the willpower to take another course of action. In my view, Evelyn, at 36 years old, is a part of the latter group, but was behaving as though she was a part of the former.

It was interesting how many of the people I follow on Twitter seemed be on the same wave-length as they bluntly remarked that they were abandoned by their fathers and still didn’t turn out to be promiscuous “thugs among women.” Though I wanted to digitally high-five these tweeters, I’m also aware of the fact that these types of circumstances manifest themselves in different ways. So while one woman may seek out affection from as many men as possible, another may become completely reclusive from all men. Neither is healthy, but both, in my humble opinion, are conscious choices — albeit one possibly more detrimental than the other. As I muddled these thoughts over in my mind, almost on cue a friend of mine texted me that she’d heard just about enough of Evelyn’s “my parent’s failed me” wallowing. As a product of a mother who had a drug problem and an abusive alcoholic father, it was hard to give Evelyn a pass for her antics when she is a dissertation away from having her PhD. And as my own father and his guilt-laden disappearing acts came to mind, I thought, neither my friend nor I have particularly explored the residual effects of our upbringings at any great length, yet we’ve managed to develop into productive, well-functioning women with healthy interpersonal relationships. We aren’t anomalies or exceptionally intelligent, we simply made a choice to be and do better than what we saw, with limited resources.

At some point, every adult will have the aha! moment that they are emulating behavior they witnessed as a child or acting out in response to the way they were treated when they were younger. Some, lightheartedly, call this turning into their mother (or father), others recognize the danger signs and immediately change their course of action, and the remainder use their upbringing as an excuse to continue down the path of destruction once they make the connection between their choices and how they were raised. The third mentality serves no purpose but to give yourself permission to repeat the cycle as if you have no choice but to do otherwise when the hard truth is that we all have choices, nature and nurture withstanding. We don’t all enter this world on equal footing, but rest assured those who sincerely want to do better for their own wellbeing and the sake of those around them will find a way. You can only blame your parents for the mistakes you fail to correct for so long.

When do you think one’s upbringing is a legitimate explanation for their behavior versus an excuse not to take responsibility for their actions?

Brande Victorian is the news and operations editor for madamenoire.com. Follow her on twitter @Be_Vic.

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We already knew Evelyn would be making an appearance on Iyanla Vanzant’s new show on the OWN network, “Fix My Life,” but it looks like the life coach has circled back to catch up with the basketball wife in light of her latest domestic/divorce drama.

According to a news release:

 Earlier this summer, Vanzant visited Miami to meet newlyweds Johnson and Lozada and explore the couple’s publicly volatile relationship. Despite Johnson choosing not to participate in the session, Vanzant and Lozada connected one-on-one and tapped into the deep-rooted anger, resentment and insecurities that have plagued Lozada.

Weeks later, after the shocking allegations of a domestic violence incident came to light, Vanzant reconnected with an emotionally raw Lozada in New York for a no-holds-barred conversation that details the eye-opening events of the night that led Lozada to file for divorce.

No holds-barred is absolutely right because in this short clip, Iyanla pointedly asks Evelyn how she went from being a thug amongst women to living in hiding inside of a hotel after marrying Chad. This clearly is not like the soft Nightline interview we saw the actual football wife give ABC on Friday. Evelyn’s two-part special will air on OWN September 15 and 22 at 10p. Here’s a preview of the interview as well as a look at what Iyanla has in store for the rest of the season of her new series.

Will you check it out?

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Source: OWN

Once the air was cleared between Oprah and her former protegee Iyanla Vanzant, the opportunities started rolling in. We’ve known for some time that Vanzant was going to get a new show on OWN but now, with the recent release of the show’s promo we can learn what to expect. Judging by the promo and Iyanla’s track record, we know this should be pretty good. Check out the promo below.

The show premieres this Saturday, June 2 on OWN at (10-11 p.m. ET/PT). Will you watch?

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