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Despite so many of the naysayers, one of the things I believe makes Iyanla Vanzant so qualified to assist people in their healing, is the fact that she’s overcome so much herself. From being raped as a child, being lied to about the identity of her mother, experiencing betrayal in a marriage and having to bury a child, Iyanla has seen, felt and experienced more pain than your average person.
And as the introduction to her show declares, she’s done her work and healed it. The more time Iyanla spends on television, the more we realize all that she’s healed herself from.
In a video recently published by OWN, Vanzant shares how she literally fought her way out of an abusive marriage. See what she had to say below.
“This was probably a great starting point for identifying who I was as a woman. Because I lived in a violent relationship. And I lived in the violent relationship because I had been an abused girl. And therefore, living and sleeping with and being married to and having children with a man who violated, abused me was normal. But I grew up here. Iyanla was born here. Rhonda moved in, but Iyanla moved out. Yeah, I grew up here. because I had to grow some cajones.
I’ll never forget, it was 18 inches of snow on the ground and my husband came in, hadn’t been home in days and days. And came in. I was cooking fish and he proceeded to attack me in the kitchen. I had had it. Done witch and this. He was 6’4 and 260 [pounds] and I’m like 5’5, maybe I was 130 pounds back then. And when I saw him coming at me, in the kitchen, tiny little kitchen, I said I’m done and I picked up the hot pan, with fish and fish grease and threw it at him. And it went all over his coat. And he was furious. But he couldn’t get to me because the grease was on the floor. So he was sliding. And that’s how I was able to scoot around him and get out of the house, run down here, in my nightgown basically. 18 inches of snow on the ground to get away from him.
And another time, when I finally left him—I always tell the story about coming down here with four bags, one for each of the kids and one for me and walking down there and around the corner to the train station, with no money. I didn’t have a dime in my pocket. And a man came down the stairs and gave me a token and cigarette, that’s what I asked him for.
About a week after, I came back here and I changed the lock on the door, while my husband was at work. I called him to find out he was at work. And I went to a hardware store. There was a hardware store on the next block and the man taught me how to take the tumbler out the door and change it. Couldn’t change the bottom lock because that was the New York City Housing Authority lock. But the top lock was your private lock. So I came home with my screwdriver and changed lock, went across the street and got my kids from the daycare center and came in the house.
He didn’t come that day, I think he came the next day. Stuck his key in the door, couldn’t get in because I had changed the lock. He did that for a while. Finally, I put the chain on the door. What he did was, I laid on the floor by the door so I could hear him coming up the stairs. And he came up the stairs and what he did was, he put the key in and pushed the door. And the only thing between me and him was the chain. Don’t ask me how he got that top lock open, I cannot tell you. But I had the chain on. And he started kicking the door. I went in the kitchen and I got a knife and through the chain, I’m just hacking. because I knew, if he got in that house, it was going to be my life or his life. And I caught him right in the chest. I heard him screaming. I think my neighbor called the police. And when the police came, they came up the stairs and it was a glass partition right outside the door, it was all full of blood. So I opened the door and I said, [jumped back and gasped] ‘Oh my goodness.” They said, ‘What happened out here?’ I said, ‘I don’t know!’ I said, ‘My ex husband was out here. He must have cut himself on the glass.’
He said, ‘Well, are you ok?’ I said, ‘Yes, I’m fine.’ He said, ‘Well, if he comes back or if you have any problem…’
I never said that I had stabbed him.
Laughs
I guess I shouldn’t laugh about stabbing somebody, should I?
Laughs some more.
Listen, it was his life or my life. I was done with him. He was done with me. He knew I was serious.”
You can watch Iyanla recount the story in front of the building where this incident took place, in the video below.
