Dr. Iyanla Vanzant has always encouraged people seeking to heal their emotional pain to look deep within. Now the personal growth guru has partnered with Oprah Winfrey in an attempt to address societal ills that are a product of a widespread form of individual suffering: the growing number of fatherless sons.
Calling it a crisis, this Sunday on OWN at 9 p.m. EST, Winfrey and Vanzant will present a two-part special edition of Oprah’s Lifeclass that speaks to the millions of people currently hurting because they grew up — or are growing up — without a dad. Vanzant hopes Oprah’s Lifeclass: Fatherless Sons will empower viewers to soothe these wounds and help ameliorate the many problems communities struggle with that have been linked to a lack of fathering.
Dr. Vanzant spoke to theGrio in depth about the goals of Oprah’s Lifeclass: Fatherless Sons, and how the role of fathers is more important than many realize.
Oprah says during Oprah’s Lifeclass: Fatherless Sons that the issue of fatherless sons is one that you most wanted to take on. Why?
It’s a topic I think that we all experience, but we don’t really talk about with a solution in mind. Everyone talks about single moms. Everyone talks about the difficulties we see young men going through.
We’ve made a joke about it in songs. We talk about “baby mama.” We talk about “baby daddy.” We don’t talk about the baby. Fatherless sons are the babies in the midst of the drama between the mother and the father. And they’re dropping out of high school. They’re ending up in jail. They’re killing each other. All of these things are going on. We just seem to have our hands tied. We have to talk about the impact on a young man’s life when his father isn’t there.
We have to talk about the humanity, the human qualities, of what happens when a child has a missing parent.
While watching a preview of the show, I was really struck by how emotional the men were. Do you think audiences will be surprised at the depth of emotion men reveal?
Yes, because America is a society where we love to talk about the problem. We never talk about the impact of it. We talk about the high incidence of incarceration among minority males, and now teenage males. We talk about the situation in which young men are not coming out of high school and going into college. We don’t talk to the young men.
We love to talk about things, and see how horrible it is, without looking at the actual humans in the midst of it. How many times have we asked the fatherless son, “how is this experience impacting your life?” We don’t do that.
You take the men on the show through a process to heal these wounds. What do you hope people at home will take away from watching this healing?
There are a couple of things for me. I hope as many missing fathers as possible see this show, so that they understand their responsibility in their sons’ lives, in their children’s lives. I hope that mothers see that, while they are doing the best they can, that there needs to be another level of healing, not for them, but for their children.
Women who have fatherless sons have to reach a place of understanding and compassion and willingness to have these men in their children’s lives. Father’s leave for a variety of reasons, but one of the reasons that they don’t come back is because they don’t know how to deal with the mothers.
Do you think women will be surprised that the show addresses the role they might be playing in creating what you have called the fatherless son epidemic?
I hope they’re surprised, shocked and horrified. I really do. I hope they are surprised at hearing from their sons, because, as a mother who had a fatherless son, I never asked my son. I made the choices and decisions about how his father would interact in his life. I did that.
I also hope that women will be a little more conscious about this willingness to have children with men who aren’t ready, who aren’t committed. They go into relationships for their selves and their needs, and never really consider the impact that it’s going to have on this male child.
Now of course, there are all kinds of ways fathers leave. Through divorce, through separation, through irresponsibility. So, I’m not putting the full weight and responsibility on women. But then there are the women who have children with men who really aren’t committed and aren’t ready. We have to look at that part.
On Mother’s Day, OWN will air a companion show focusing on the over 10 million single mothers in the U.S., and how they can best raise fatherless sons. What can we expect from that episode?
Hopefully, how to keep the door open as a mom, when you have a son. It’s difficult. And they [the mothers] ask the hard questions. “Okay, my door is open, but he doesn’t honor his word.” “My door is open, but he doesn’t show up.” “My door is open, but he’s made a choice not to walk through it.”
So, I hope that women will see that this is a multi-faceted challenge, but there is a role that we can play to at least a greater possibility: That even a man who has left, will come back.
African-Americans have been more deeply impacted by the fatherless son epidemic. Do you think there is a more specific message for this group?
Other than go back and get your children? Go back and get your children. It is doable. Go back and get your children. I think that that’s critical.
To many men and women of all backgrounds you are an iconic presence of wholeness and healing. How does it feel to be such a strong example, especially as you have shared your own healing journey through your books and other media?
I don’t think of myself that way. I’m really not attached to the labels. I don’t think I’m iconic at all. I just think that I’ve been given an opportunity by life, the universe — [and] Oprah Winfrey (laughs) — to say out loud what people talk about around the kitchen table about these things.
There are hundreds of thousands of women right now talking about the fact that their children’s father isn’t in their life. But nobody is saying it out loud. And no one has the solutions. What I hope to offer are the healing solutions, the greater possibilities. If that makes me iconic, then I accept it, but for me it’s my life ministry, the work that I’ve come on this planet to do. It’s the reason that I’ve had the experiences that I’ve had. That doesn’t mean I have the answers to everything, or that I know everything. But I do know that what we’re doing now isn’t working. I know that, and I can speak to that. I know what worked and what didn’t work in my own life, and I can speak to that.
So, I think that’s what it is for me: Let me just say out loud what nobody else is saying.
In a portion of Oprah’s Lifeclass: Fatherless Sons, it is stated that a mother can’t be a father. That is interesting, because every Father’s Day, a lot of black women will thank their mother for being both their mother and their father, which often elicits strong disagreements from black men. Can you elaborate on that statement?
Fathers protect, fathers provide, fathers perform. In the absence of a father, a mother can protect, a mother can provide. A mother cannot perform the roles a father is expected to perform, because she’s not a man. My right hand can’t do what my left hand can do. It just can’t happen.
There are some things that a father gives both a male child and a female child that a mother cannot because she’s not a male. If you look at the energy of it, a male is very different. Classic case: A father will take a boy child or a girl child, throw it up in the air, and catch ’em on the way down. That teaches the child that, “I’m secure,” that, “I’m safe,” that “I can go into unknown, uncharted territory, and I’m gonna fall, and that’s going to be okay.”
Mothers never throw their children up in the air! (Laughs.) They just don’t do it. Because our propensity is to do the softer, the gentler, the more nurturing kinds of things. We don’t even have the energy to do it the way men do it. There’s an energy that a mother can’t bring. There’s a mind set that a mother cannot bring, because she’s female and not male.
Doesn’t mean she can’t protect her children. Doesn’t mean she can’t provide for her children. But she can never, as a female, perform the things that are specifically performed by a male. She just can’t do it. Doesn’t take away from her what she does. But she can’t do what a man does.
After your show on fatherless sons, will there be a show about fatherless daughters?
They’re called “daddyless daughters.” A boy needs a father. That’s a role. That’s a demonstration. That’s a model.
A girl needs a daddy. That is an energy. That’s a position. That is a place in her heart. Very different. But yes, we will do something on that.
About your other show, Iyanla: Fix My Life — people are so curious to know if you have reached any form of resolution since your falling out with DMX after he appeared on that program. You taped a beautiful open letter to him, extending an offering of healing. Has there been any communication between you two?
No. One of the things that we’ve discovered in the taping of Iyanla: Fix My Life is that the more willing the guest is to do the work, and to do the healing, the greater the resolution. And for his own reasons, as well as the obvious reason of his substance abuse issues, he just isn’t willing. And that’s okay. The seed has been planted. Sometimes you plant a seed, and it takes the tree two, three years to grow. The seed has been planted.
But it’s all contingent on his willingness, and right now he’s not willing.
Who will be coming up next on Iyanla: Fix My Life? What do you think of Lauryn Hill as a candidate, given all she is publicly going through?
I only look at issues. So if her issue is something that speaks to the hearts and the minds of the viewers, that’s fine. We don’t do Fix My Life for celebrities, and Fix My Life for normal people. We do Fix My Life looking at the issues. And that’s what we’re fixing. The issues. So it doesn’t matter to me whose name is attached to it.
I was really struck by what you described as your ministry: Your shows and your books as a spiritual path. How do you stay inspired spiritually?
I have a daily spiritual practice. I have a life, because there’s a force, an essence, an energy — some call it God, some call it spirit, some call it “source” — that’s greater than me. And each day it is my responsibility as a living being to tap into that source, to be connected to that energy.
And that is why what I do every day is about manifesting, about demonstrating, the energy of that source.
That’s what makes my life a ministry. That’s what makes my work a ministry — connecting to and demonstrating the essence of that source.
Follow Alexis Garrett Stodghill on Twitter at @lexisb.