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After eight long seasons, Iyanla, Fix My Life will be coming to an end. Vanzant announced the impending conclusion of the popular OWN series back in December, citing nastiness and namecalling as one of the nails in the coffin.
“One thing that eight years of Fix My Life has taught me is how mean and nasty and unkind people can be. I don’t want that energy in my life anymore,” Vanzant told Danielle Young. “I don’t want people calling me names and talking about me. I’m just very sensitive to energy. I don’t deserve it and I don’t want it. So now, if you want a piece of me, you’ve got to come to me and you got to pay for it.”
This isn’t totally surprising. Sessions have been come quite intense in recent seasons and sometimes, the conflicts have extended beyond the set.
The final six episodes of Iyanla, Fix My Life will begin airing on April 10 on OWN. Vanzant, her unconventional healing exercises, and her hilarious one-liners will be sorely missed from our TV lineup. However, we have seven great seasons to rewatch in the meantime as we await season eight. Here are some of the most memorable moments from the series over the years.
“Send ’em in the mail like fruit!”
While discussing Illysha’s decision to raise her daughter’s six kids, Iyanla offers the grandmother tough love as she attempts to get her to recognize the role that she has played in enabling her daughter’s absence from her children’s lives. While Illysha insists that she only raised her grandchildren because she did not have a choice in the matter, Iyanla insists that she could have very well sent her grandchildren back to her daughter when she told her, “send ’em in the mail like fruit!”
“Did it ever dawn on you, ‘Let me get a vasectomy?'”
We all remember Jay, the man who biologically fathered 34 children. To get him to understand the magnitude of his decision to produce so many children and to help him to understand that it is virtually impossible to effectively cater to the needs of all of them, Iyanla had him partake in an exercise in which she had him attempt to hold 34 plastic baby dolls.
“You let a penis penetrate your friendship”
Speaking of Jay, another memorable moment was when Iyanla gathered the mothers of his children to discuss the tension between them and their decision to continue to reproduce with him given his track record. Among the women were two former best friends who developed rage and hatred for one another as a result of the betrayal and subsequent love triangle.
“We’re done”
As previously mentioned, not all guests were receptive to Iyanla and her approach. A session with Jillian and Ramone went off the rails before it even began due to the production team showing up late to pick Jillian up from her hotel. Jillian called Iyanala and her team “unprofessional” and accused them of trying to agitate her for ratings. Ramone accused the team of placing his wife in harm’s way by leaving her in the hotel lobby. Iyanla decided that she was done with the both of them and asked them to leave.
“There is no life from the neck down in your body”
In a slightly uncomfortable session with gospel singing group The Pace Sisters, the women get real about the manipulation and control they experienced at the hands of their father and brother who use the name of the Lord to keep them in check. During the conversation, Iyanla called some of the sisters out as being “nice-nasty” and confronted June and Leslie for being emotionally detached. As the conversation intensified, Iyanla told Leslie that she is essentially dead “from the neck down.”
“I don’t have to fight you for your healing”
One of the more disturbing and explosive moments from the series was when Kamiyah Mobley, a young woman who learned that her mother abducted her from a hospital eight hours after she was born, unleashed her rage. She went on a profanity-laden tirade filled with threats of physical violence against Vanzant, all emerging from her displeasure with the terms of a particular exercise.
What were some of your favorite moments?
