Iyanla Vanzant, who is returning to our screens soon, is also opening up about the difficult reason behind her decision not to attend the funeral of her youngest daughter, Nisa, who died at age 49 in 2023.
During a recent appearance on the hit morning show “The Breakfast Club,” the 72-year-old celebrity life coach revealed her choice not to attend was about protecting her peace.
When the topic of setting boundaries versus putting up emotional walls came up, Vanzant explained how her boundaries came into play during her daughter’s funeral. At the time, she shared that her relationship with her grandson was too strained, explaining that he “was just out of his mind.”
“I know it was grief,” she continued. “But I wasn’t gonna put myself in jeopardy. I wasn’t gonna give him the opportunity to disrespect his mother by disrespecting her mother. And I didn’t know what he might do… but I was a trigger for him. I knew I was a trigger for him, and I had to tell the truth about that.”
When asked how difficult it was for her not to go, Vanzant said, “Once I made the decision, because I made it from a place of love and care, I was okay with it.”
Instead, the TV personality said she visited the day before.
“I had my own thing with her,” she recalled. “She was still gonna be dead the next day. I didn’t have to be there.”
She noted that there are things people do out of tradition that they may not truly want to do, but that doesn’t mean they have to.
“I’m not doing that. I’m too old, and I don’t have wrinkles yet,” she added with a laugh. “So I don’t want wrinkles!”
By the time Vanzant lost her youngest daughter, she had already experienced that same grief before. She also lost her oldest daughter, Gemmia, to colon cancer in the early 2000s. The mother of three — who is also mom to son Damon, 56 — has in recent years spoken openly about feeling more prepared for Nisa’s death, in a sense, because she had already endured the loss of a child.
“When I lost Nisa, I knew how to do it because I had already buried Gemmia,” she explained during an appearance on “Tamron Hall.”
“See, when I buried Gemmia, I didn’t know how to do it,” she admitted. “I didn’t know how to be a woman burying a child. So when I lost Nisa — it’s been 115 days — when I lost Nisa, I knew how to do it. That’s grace. I knew how much to do. I knew who to call. I knew not to try to do everything by myself.”
