tavis: good evening from los angeles, i'm tavis smiley. so your regulars on oprah's hit show and then barbara walters calls to offer you your own show, but it fizzles, and then your husband divorces you via email and your daughter dies of a rare form of colon cancer in your arms on christmas day. but then you lose your company, your house, and more. so what happens next? tonight "new york times" best-selling author iyanla vazant answer that is question and more as we discuss her new text, "peace from broken pieces." we're glad you've joined us, a candid conversation with iyanla vazant coming up right now. >> all i know is his name is

james and he needs extra help with his reading. james. >> yes. >> to everyone making a difference -- >> thank you. >> you help us all live better. >> nationwide insurance supports tavis smiley. with every question and every answer, nationwide insurance is proud to improve financial literacy and remove obstacles to economic empowerment one conversation at a time. nationwide is on your side. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. [captioning made possible by kcet public television] tavis: i'm pleased to welcome distant distant to this program, motivational speaker and former host of her own syndicated talk

showou very personal look at recent events in her own life, including the death of her daughter on christmas day. the new book is called, appropriately, "peace from broken pieces". easy for me to say. "peace from broken pieces." i'm honored to have you back on this set. >> it's been a while. tavis: glad to see you. this title i love and i should say up front in terms of putting this out there, this book is published by our imprint, smiley books, but i love this title, "peace from broken pieces." tell me about the title. >> broken pieces of my life, broken pieces of my history, my story, my mind, broken pieces of my mind, my heart, and i just got to that place where i had to come to peace with that. i think we just have to -- you can't fix it. i couldn't fix it. i couldn't fix anything, i couldn't change anything, i couldn't make it any different. i couldn't undo it, i just had to come to peace. tavis: i opened the show, and i

want to rehash this, because i want to give you an opportunity to respond to this, of course. i opened the show by suggesting -- by reminding the audience that you're a regular on oprah's hit number one daytimetalk show. barbara walters calls to offer you your own show. you leave open remarks commence your own daytime show produced by barbara walters' company. it eventually fizzles. after that things start to go downhill. your husband divorces you via email, the i.r.s. comes because you're investing all of your money, trying to safety life of your daughter. your daughter dies in your arms on christmas day and then they take your company, they take your house, everything just falls into disarray. how do you find peace in the midst of that kind of storm? >> you get still, first of all. for me it was tell the truth. my life, my caregivers and my parents, had given me a foundation that wasn't true. wasn't true about who i was, who

they were. there was so many broken and missing pieces from my story. tavis: let me jump in right quick. how do people give you a foundation? how do people give you a foundation that is not true? >> ok. so for example, my mother was an alcoholic. i guess i was drunk in the womb. so when i was born -- and my mother died when i was 3. nobody ever told me that my mother was an alcoholic. never told me that. now, i happen not to drink and never understood why. nobody ever told me that my mother was the other woman. her and my father weren't married. she was the other woman. and my stepmother, who ultimately raised me, they told me that was my mother, and she wasn't my mother. so this is how people give you a foundation that's not true. they lie to you. they leave out the bad parts. they make themselves look good, and then these pathologies continue in your life.

so i built a life of not really looking at truth. not that i was a liar, but i was alone in my head without adult supervision and i would make up stories and expect that reality to line up with what was, because i didn't know the truth. i didn't know the truth about my grandmother. my grandmother was mentally ill, straight up. crazy as the day is long to the bone, crazy. now i know my grandmother was mentally ill. everyone knew something was wrong with her, but they were also afraid of her, so nobody said anything. they knew she was physically abusive to me. they knew it. they would give me little winks and stares. so i grew up thinking that it's ok for the people i love, the people who take care of me to treat me badly. that's a pathology. i grew up with it. so i grew up, and even in my career, when i went to do certain things -- i don't want to call names and call people

out, because it's not nice. but people didn't always treat me nice, and i made it ok. i made it ok for people to lie to me, for people not to treat me well, because i inherited that. tavis: that's them, whether it's your family, whether it's people around you, so-called friends, that's them. how do we end up internalizing the stuff that they try to put on us, so that their untruth doesn't necessarily have to become my untruth, does it? >> well, i call it personal lies. we each have a personal lie, everybody does. that personal lie for me was i'm wrong, i'm bad, i did it wrong. because people who say they love me and care about me, if they're treating me badly, it's because i'm wrong, i'm bad, i did it wrong, because that's way grew -- that's what i grew up with. you know, when someone's beating the hell out of you and they're telling you, look what you made me do -- i write in there about

the halloween horror, you know? and that experience taught me so many lessons. wrong lessons, bad lessons, but i internalize, that i did something that made my father beat me to within unconsciousness. my stepmother reinforced it by saying, why don't you ever listen? my grandmother used to beat me or punish me or make me wrong, make me bad. i just internalized it. now, through my own prior life and my spiritual work and my sincere commitment, i was able to live beyond it, but eventually the cracks in the foundation, the weight at the top, my success got too heavy and the foundation began to crack. tavis: i'm glad you said that, because it raises for me the question i suspect viewers and fans of yours -- as we know, the person yell author, we watched you regularly on the oprah show,

as you said a moment ago. so i'm thinking that you're giving all these people advice, acts of faith, millions of copies sold around the world. you're advising people and you're on daytime television and you're giving speeches and you can't turn down fast enough the offers that are coming at you. i know this because we're friends. in that space how are you navigating your own journey, this hell that you're going through, while you're advising other folks to get out of their own situation? >> well, see, that was god's work. that came through me for the people, and i could handle that. i could -- i was in that. that was unadulterated, that was pure, you know? but then when i got home and when i got quiet, that's when the cracks in my -- you know -- and i'm like, whoop, let me write another book, whoop, let me go take a trip, let me go counsel somebody, because i couldn't navigate it, i couldn't

integrate it in my mind. it was more like a feeling of something isn't right here. buff -- but i have the money now, not collecting cheese anymore. got the man. chased him for 37 years and got him, you know. [laughter] got the little, you know, spanks and the underwire bra, everything looking good. i can go anywhere, buy anything. so when that thing started, i'm like, you know, you are so ungrateful. look at your life. what's the matter with you? tavis: what are you complaining about? >> right. look at you. just ignore that. go on about your business. go do something. so i thought that the more i gave to the world and the more work i did and the more i touched people that that would make that go away. tavis: i'm going to come back to the barbara walters-produced daytime show. let me jump ahead o -- i don't even know how you found the

space, the place, i should say, to even write about losing your 31-year-old daughter in your arms on christmas day to a rare form of colon cancer after all this other stuff has fallen apart on you. then your daughter dyes. the question i want to ask about that before i jump back, when that happens, does that offer you a different kind of context, looking back at all the stuff prior to? i can't imagine anything being more -- >> unspeakable. tavis: there you go. >> it's unspeakable. tavis: yeah. >> what happened was after -- i lost my mind. literally. i mean, i literally lost sanity, literally. i just lost my mind. and i saw you not long after that. i think i came to do the state of the black union. tavis: here in l.a. >> right. and i came out. i would come out insanity for like five of seven minutes and then go back to insanity.

but what happened was i began to read her journals. she left -- tavis: your daughter. >> yes. jamilla left journals from when she was 16. and as i began to read those journals and i saw about how she experienced herself, how she experienced her life and how she experienced me was nothing like i thought it was. she felt ugly, she felt unworthy, she felt disconnected, she felt useless. and this was the most beautifully, incredibly talented, gifted -- she is an angel. and she felt that i was emotionally unavailable and manipulative and mean. what was she drinking? but she wasn't here, so i couldn't talk to her. tavis: how do you process reading that in your daughter's journals after she's gone? and to your point, you can't even get clarity on this. >> you just sit in the bed like

a fool, like an idiot and you drool and you just close your door and you don't let anybody in. but in her writings, what i saw was my life, when i was ugly and worthless and when i was -- felt useless and untalented. i said, oh, my god. and then it shifted and i was like, ok. this is me. she wrote it, but this is my story. and then i began to look in a different way, and that's where i discovered the pathology, things that i inherited that, without even knowing it, i passed it on to my children. things that i felt and hadn't healed and cleaned up. without knowing it, i passed it on to my children, andshe saw it. so really, her journals helped me heal, because i had to look deeper than, ok, it's not just that i did the wrong thing and my caregivers beat the hell out of me, there's something else going on here. there's something going on here,

and that's when i started to look at the foundation. tavis: but to your credit, not that you need credit, but to your credit, and i know this because i read the book, obviously, that in those journals it wasn't just jamilla conjuring up the worst of you. dr. king always said there's some evil in the best of us and some good in the worst of us. >> that's right. tavis: we're not human and divine, we're just human. you also saw the ways in those journals the way that your life positively impacted jamilla. so it wasn't all negative. >> no, no. the things that she taught, and many lessons that i gave her and how she interpreted it, i wthis write this down. ooh, she got that one. oh, i didn't see it that way. tavis: should we give her a book credit? >> yeah, you know, the silent writer, if you will. so, no, it wasn't all bad. it was healing. you know, we can call it whatever we want to call it, but i'm sitting here today, as the

old folks would say, with the blood running warm in my veins clothed in my right mind because all things were working together for my good. i couldn't have continued the way that i did. i don't know why it cost me my daughter and my husband and my house, but who am i? what do i know? tavis: you just quoted a biblical scripture forknow it. the bible tells us that all things work together for good, for those who love god and are called according to his purpose. doesn't say everything is going to be good, but everything works for your good. what is that distinction about for you? >> well, it wasn't good that i grew up the way i did. it wasn't good that people beat me and i was raped at a child. it wasn't good that i, you know, really had on-the-job training about life, and that's the thing that i got from jamilla. no one ever mothered me, and i had three kids. i knew how to provide. i didn't know how to mother.

my kids ate, which is something i didn't always do. they had a roof over their head, which is something i didn't always have. they knew that no matter what, if you came after my babies, i'm taking you down. they knew that. i didn't have that. but i didn't know how to mother, so i didn't mother. but i discovered my father hadt been mothered. my grandmother hadn't been mothered. she didn't know how to mother. so some of the things that happened weren't good, but they've come together to teach me good, because i have my daughter's daughter, so you'll a grandmother raising a grandchild and i am for her who no one was for me. i am for her who i couldn't even be for my daughter, you know? tavis: i read a quote one day not too long ago, and i'm curious as to your take on this. and the quote was something like -- and i'm paraphrasing, the children that god allows us to have is his way of giving us another opportunity to get it right. >> that's right.

tavis: does that make sense? >> absolutely. tavis: your granddaughter now is a chance for you to -- >> now, i didn't have a voice as a young woman, and i now know jamilla felt she doesn't have a voice. my granddaughter will have a voice. i didn't have anyone to teach me how to stand up for myself, within myself as a young woman. jamilla didn't know how to do that. my granddaughter knows how to do it. she's working with it. she's got to try it on, because she's a motherless child. i know that void of being a motherless child. as a young woman, i know. so sometimes i look at her and i say, just come here, baby, you know, i'm not your mother, but i got bosoms. put your head -- come on, get up in the bed with me. nobody did that for me. and a motherless child is -- it's a phenomena in this society that we really need to look at,

particularly for the girls, whether the mother is dead gone, incarcerated gone, emotionally gone, physically gone. a motherless child is something we really need to start paying attention to, because those young women grow up and have children. a motherless child raising a child, i know from experience that's a hard lesson. tavis: yet, i'm still trying to juxtapose how it is with all this going on, as you were raising these three babies, you still found the time -- not found the time, made the time to go to school at night, to get your degree. >> took them with me. tavis: and then to law school. got your law degree. graduated top of the class. you graduate with honors. i mean, how do you do all of that with all this madness going on with all this madness going on around you? >> something greater than me, really. and i wasn't easy. if you could interview the creator, he'd tell you, she is a piece of work.

[laughter] disobedient, hard-headed. i'm asking questions. he'd tell me, go over here and do that. well, i don't want to do that. could i do something else? no, go do this. but i learned. it's what saved me. it's what saved me. it's what saved me after jamilla died. and one day i said, enough is enough. how much is enough? so over here i have all of jamilla's painkillers. a cancer patient has got some painkillers. over here i have this beautiful little pearl-hand led pistol. am i going to go the pistol or the pills? i'm a virgo, i'm a diva, really, so i don't like a mess. so the pistol was kind of out. and then the pills, i was like, now, is this enough, you know? i don't want to wake up with brain damage because i messed up the suicide. and then i heard, will you just stop being dramatic, stop it. it's almost like jamilla was

whispering in my -- don't do drama, ok? i'm like, diva down, diva down. [laughter] diva down. stop doing drama. go over there and sit down. and so here i am. tavis: wow. we sit in los angeles. you live on the east coast, but you have a daytime talk show, when you were starting over here in l.a., and you know how l.a. works. >> yeah. tavis: in this town -- i know a whole bunch of folk, and i pray that i'm never one of them when i get counseled, who thinks that his or her life -- the worth of his or her life is really wrapped in how often they're seen on air, how successful they are. you know what i'm getting at. there are folk in this town who, if they're not on tv, if they're not in the movies, if they don't have a hit, then they're trying

to search and find who they really are, because their identity is so wed to being a star, being a celebrity. >> right. tavis: so how do you process, then, going from being on oprah regularly to having your own time -- your own daytime talk show produced by ms walters, it goes away, and you're out there? you don't have a book deal, you don't have a tv show. how do you move through that space where your identity seems to have been -- >> for me the television was the gravy. it wasn't the cake. the cake for me was the writing. i'm a teacher. i am a spiritual technician and i teach. that's what i do. so the television was the gravy, you know, was the icing. for me the books were the cake, the speaking was the cake. but all of that was fixed, too. tavis: i'm glad you fixed that, because gravy and cake doesn't go together. >> i want gravy on my cake.

so that -- my identity wasn't tied into that, number one. number two, the one thing, tavis, and i have to say this, because, you know, putting all my stuff out there like that was really risky, but the one thing that i will stand for that i knew that jamilla knew was that my work was pure and it was always from god to me to the people, always. no matter how crazy i was, i'd throw some lashes on and work it out, you know. but the thing was it was what happened with the tv shows going away. working with ms. winfrey was a blessing that i couldn't have even asked for. who says i want to work with her the way i worked with her? part of her change of life faculty on the show once a week every week for a number of months, and then when this deceptive intelligence of an offer came in and just created some upheaval -- and i really

was a virgin. i didn't know anything about television, about the networks, about anything. so when it happened, when this other offer came at me, i immediately said no, no, no, i don't want that. but then i raised it with the powers to be at harpo, i'm not going to say ms. winfrey, i'll say the powers to be. and because this industry is so jaded, they really thought i was playing two ends against the middle, trying to say i'm here, i'm going to go over here. tavis: in other words, if you don't give me a show, i'm going to go with barbara walters. >> right, but that wasn't my intention at all, really. i was just stupid, you know? tavis: you didn't know business. >> i didn't know. and so that created some upheaval. i ended up doing the show with barbara walters production. and with all of this, here's the bottom line -- oprah winfrey supported me, who i was and my

vision, and barwal did not, that's it. and it wasn't oprah's responsibility to sustain my vision, it wasn't barwal's responsibility to line up with my vision. it was my responsibility to stand for my vision, and i didn't. i didn't. so i ended up leaving someone who supported my vision, to be with somebody who didn't support my vision, and they didn't want reality, they wanted soe figment of my imagination. they ended up with nothing. there came a point where i said i am a spiritual technician and a teacher. i'm not doing another makeover. and they said, oh, the negress is awake. where did she come from? tavis: we've got problems. >> we got a problem here. and they said, well, this isn't going to work, and i said, no, it isn't. because if we can't stand in this vision together, i'm out. tavis: as much as you put on the pages of this book in terms of

lessons learned, are you still getting take aways? are you still learning from this? >> yes, still healing, still learning. it's not all over yet. the piece that i'm clear about is me. i'm clear about me, who i am, why i'm here, what i do, what i don't do, what works, what doesn't work. i'm still working out the relationship piece because all my issue was around my father and looking for my father and making men responsible for what i didn't get from him. i'm still working that out. still working out some of the stuff with value, worth, money, you know. i love money, love it. but that little girl in there still is afraid to have too much. still afraid to have too much. so i'm working that out. and how much of myself to give away, how much. tavis: you gave a whole lot of yourself in this book and i want to thank you for doing it.

it is a wonderful piece of work. if you are a iyanla vazant fan, as many of you are, given the fact she's a perennial author, you'll want to read this one about all that she has endured and how she's still standing as strong as ever. love the title, "peace from broken pieces," p-e-a-c-e, "peace from broken pieces," the new one from eye eye. good to have you on. >> thank you. tavis: thanks for tuning in. that's our show for tonight. until next time, keep the faith. >> for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs doring. tavis: i'm tavis smiley. join me next time for a conversation with comedian dennis miller. that's next time. >> all i know is his name is james and he needs extra help

with his reading. >> i'm james. >> yes. >> to everyone making a difference -- >> thank you. >> you help us all live better. >> nationwide insurance supports tavis smiley. with every question and every answer, nationwide insurance is proud to jane tasselmeyer working to improve financial -- proud to be working with improve financial literacy. nationwide is on your side. >> and from contributions from pbs from viewers like you. thank you. captioned by the national captioning institute --www.ncicap.org--