February 8, 2023 • 46 mins
When a struggling young man calls in with issues surrounding his own identity, Iyanla finds a way to get to the core of the issue. Her caller today feels like he’s constantly held down by his mother and sister, who diminish him as less of a man. Unfortunately, he’s financial dependent on his mother, and feels more like her emotional partner rather than her son, so isn’t sure how to stand up and be his own person. Iyanla helps guide him toward becoming a man with a plan, rather than a victim.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
I am Younger, your host for this journey. I was
a hopeless love aholic but just could not get my
love to work. Then, after a series of heartbreaks and
deep heartache, I finally got clear about what love is
and what it is not. I want to share some
(00:22):
of what I've learned about love aholism. Welcome to the
Our Spot, a production of shondaland Audio in partnership with
I Heart Radio. One of the quickest ways to tear
(00:47):
your relationship down, and to tear yourself down in the process,
is to expect others to give you what you're not
giving to yourself. No matter what the reason is, you
can't give it, but more importantly, if you don't have it,
you can't receive it. So very often in our relationships,
(01:11):
we make other people responsible for giving to us that
which we can only give to ourselves. Sometimes it comes
from childhood trauma. Sometimes it comes from laziness. Sometimes it
comes from just not having the information we need to
(01:32):
make the next most appropriate steps, and instead of researching
in and doing what's required on our own, we lean on,
depend on expect other people to do it for us.
I'm telling you it'll tear your relationship down at all times,
(01:52):
in all situations, under all circumstances, you must vote for you.
You have to vote for you have to do what's
right for you. You have to do what's best for you.
Because sometimes the thing that you're expecting the other person
to give you A they don't have, B, they don't
(02:15):
know how to give it to you, and see they're
just not willing. Doesn't mean you have to do without.
It simply means you have to figure out how to
give it to yourself. Good afternoon, beloved, Welcome to the
art spot. What is the challenge, issue, dilemma, relationship problem
(02:37):
you've got going on that we can nibblong together today? Oh,
thank you for calling. Basically, you know, um, I just
feel like I'm emotionally neglected by the name you know,
women in my life. And you know, every since I
(02:59):
give the death of my grandmother, she like she really
you know, let me experience love as a supernatural level,
and I mean every since being you know, I'm filling
in a space where it's just me. You know, at
some point, um, I've been used as an emotional disposal
(03:24):
for you know, the main to women in my life,
and it has kind of shaped my perception of you know,
wanting to be by myself versus you know, being with someone.
And I mean it is, you know, really really challenge
(03:45):
my way of thinking when it came to when it
comes to, you know, as I look at a woman,
you know, Okay, you said two main women in your life.
What does that mean? Basically the women that have been
a part of my life ever since I was young,
basically my mother and my sister. Mother and sister. You
(04:07):
feel emotionally neglected. What does that mean? Emotionally neglected? What
does that mean? Or how does that look in your
life as I see it? When I, you know, come
to them to express myself or to try to have
some type of conversation, I get dismissed, I get the mean,
(04:28):
I get you know, down trotted, and it's just basically
taken my masculinity as as a joke, you know, like
is not being recognized. Okay, So I hear a lot
of um code language and what you're sharing. You said
(04:53):
they take your masculinity as a joke. You said that
the way you've poortrade yourself. So I need you to
trust yourself enough to break that down for me. What
does that mean? They take your masculinity as a joke
because of the way you portrayed yourself at certain times.
(05:17):
What does that mean? Basically, um, not having a good
structure of a male figure in my life. It conditioned
me to not understand who I was as a little boy,
you know, growing up around women and you know, being
(05:37):
looking through certain traumas. It's shaped my perception of how
I be myself to a point where you know, I
demean myself for years and didn't understand who I would
as far as my sexuality. So are you saying to
me that you're a gay man? No, I'm not actually
saying that. I'm saying, um, redefining who I am as
(06:02):
a man. Okay, So you are redefining who you men
are as a man in terms of, um, how you
present yourself in the world, in terms of how you
identify sexually, in terms of how you want to be treated.
Is that accurate? Yea, So are you clear about what
(06:23):
that definition is? Are you clear? Are you still in
the discovery process? I'm still in this discovery process because
I feel like life is a discovering process in itself,
and I mean with everything that we are. Uh, you know,
I guess present it with throughout you know, the spiritual
(06:46):
journey that we're own. It's like, you know, we have
a lot of stuff that we have to kind of
dismantle in our mind to be able to move forward.
So okay, so I want you to own all of that.
I want you to own all of that. I have
a lot of things I need to dismantle in my
mind as I moved through my spiritual journey because you're
(07:09):
externalizing it. So when you put it outside of yourself,
it's like you're talking about somebody else as opposed to
owning what it is that you're doing. Does that make sense?
So then when you say, as I move through the
spiritual journey, simply means that you're acknowledging to yourself that's
(07:32):
your own a journey, which it sounds like, is what
you want them to do. But if you're not doing it,
how can you expect them to do it. You're not
acknowledging your own journey, but you want other people to
recognize and acknowledge it. So that's why I'm encouraging you
to own it. I wouldn't necessarily say I don't acknowledge
(07:54):
the journey or I'm owned because it's like when I
come to those other individuals that you know I'm around,
such as my the other the two women in my
life that you know, I leave you so much toward,
you know, when it comes to having that family bonding experience,
(08:15):
they make it evidence that it's not gonna happen. And
that's that in itself is dis empowering for me as
a man, because it's like I have to constantly revert
back to myself and if I have a certain opinion
or a how cannot say, a mindfulness of something, it's
(08:39):
always being not being accepted. In the other words, dismissed, denied. Yeah,
why why do you tell yourself they do that? Why
my sister and my mother dismissed, demean denying me? Because
because they're powerful women and they have a how can
(09:04):
I say, it seems like they have a um just
them mindset where I've always been an outcast of some sort,
you know what I'm saying. And why are you an outcast?
I guess because it's just the way how me and
my sister's childhoods. We're not together, you know, and now
(09:28):
since we're older, it's it's more evident that I get
the feeling as if I'm not needed. So you and
your sister weren't raised together with your mother. Is that
what you're saying? Okay, you were raised by your grandmother.
She was raised by my grandmother, and I was raised
in the household between my parents, and it was you know,
(09:50):
a lot of traumatic experiences that took place as far
as you know, me being um molested and everything. And
I mean it was just lot, and I mean I
have to revise it, all of that now, you know,
trying to we define myself as a man. Okay, Okay,
(10:13):
take a breath with me. I want to share with
you when I'm hearing, and it may or may not
be true for you, and that's okay. But if there's
anything here that you can feel or sense or receive,
then we can dig a little deeper right there. Okay,
(10:37):
So I heard you say that you were raised in
a difficult environment between your parents where you experience some trauma,
including being sexually molested. Right I'm going to take a
leap here and say that when that happened, it was
(11:00):
an addressed accurate it was it wasn't addressed. Okay, did
they know or did they know and not address it?
They knew, and they did not address it. It kind
of it kind of weighed down on their relationship. And
(11:21):
that's what I guess broke up that um, you know
union between them two. And you know, for years it
was like I didn't get therapy. So it was like
boom boom boom. You know, traumatic experience after traumatic experience.
And I mean that that really, you know, challenges somebody mentally. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
(11:45):
So I want to say, I want to ask how
old were you? Do you remember how old you were
when it was the first violation. I think I was
a leave about The youngest was leave about six or seven.
So you had a traumatic experience involving molestation that was
(12:06):
not addressed. I can't imagine that. As a child, you
made up in your mind, I don't matter, I'm not important,
what happens to me doesn't matter, and I'm out here
on my own. Does any of that sound familiar? That
sounds familiar to you? And is that not what you're
(12:27):
experiencing right now? That you don't matter, you're not important,
and what happens to you doesn't matter, and you're out
there on your own. Is that what you're experiencing now?
So you're kind of re reliving some of the decisions
or the beliefs that you came to in your childhood. Now,
(12:50):
why do you tell yourself that they didn't address it?
If they knew, your parents, knew, your mother, your sister,
if they knew, why do you tell yourself that they
didn't address it. They didn't address it? Because why because
I didn't receive the nurturing care that I thought that
(13:11):
I deserved, you know, solely from them, right? And I
mean I understand in in a family, everybody has their
own situations that they're dealing with. And it's like when
you're a child in the situation, and how can I
say how you can say, listen, this is how you
(13:33):
can say, when I was a child in that situation,
I did not receive the emotional care and support that
I needed. Is that true? Yes? Lam? Can you say that?
Can you own it? When I was a child, I
didn't receive the emotional nurturing and care that I needed.
(13:59):
Can you say that? Let me hear you say that.
And I was the child I did not receive the
emotional support and care and that made me feel finish
that and that made me feel like I was neglected.
I was worth Yeah, I was neglected. I didn't matter.
(14:25):
I was worthless. And today your mother and your sister dismiss, demean, diminish,
and deny you, which triggers back up the feelings that
I don't matter, I'm neglected, because that's what you said,
that's the first thing out your mouth. You are emotionally
(14:48):
neglected by the two women in your life. So what's
happening is you are re traumatized by their behavior. Does
that make sense, is ma'am? What I want you to
hear is that their behavior is one thing that's real,
(15:09):
that's true for you, But the energy, the trauma is
in you. So I really want to encourage you right
now in your life to focus on neutralizing, healing, eliminating
that trauma, because trying to get from them now what
(15:35):
you didn't get from them before is retraumatizing you. You're
still trying to get from them now, the care, the nurturing,
the support that you need as a man. You're trying
to get it from them now when they've already demonstrated
either they can't give it, they won't give it, they
(15:56):
don't want to give it. They already demonstrated that to
you as a child. So what do we do now?
We'll talk about that right after this break. Welcome back
to the our spot. Let's pick up where we left are.
(16:17):
Tell me what you hear me saying. It doesn't matter
what words you use. You don't have to repeat it.
I just want to know what you hear in your
mind that I'm saying. It's the saying that you know
I heard all my life. When a person shows you
who they all believed in the first time, and it
doesn't make them bad people. They may not have the
(16:37):
capacity to give you what you need, and insisting or
wanting or needing them to do it means that you
are abusing yourself now. You are neglecting yourself now. You
are diminishing yourself now. You are denying yourself now because
(17:00):
they can't give you now what you didn't get before
and they may not be able to give it to you.
All Right, I received it, And I just want to know.
When you depend on someone financially, how like that is
a form of financial abase and neglect, right, Okay, So
you're dependent upon your mother and your sister financially, is
(17:24):
that what I'm hearing you say? Okay, go ahead, why
is that? Why are you dependent upon them financially because
I didn't push myself to the fullest potential when it
came to me having to learn, you know, how to
conduct my finances in a responsible way. Okay, so that's
(17:45):
one of the things that you're learning. Yes, and um,
you know I had to basically pick up and do
that myself. And I mean it's not a problem. I
just look at it as you know. Yeh, the village
has an understanding on their finding a because they should
be able to pass that down on to the next
(18:05):
that's coming up in the tribe. You know, that's my
perception of it. Takes a villains to raise a child.
But you're not a child. But you're not a child.
You're a man. You are a man who is depending. Okay,
so listen to this. You are a man who is
dependent upon people who don't have the capacity or the
(18:29):
willingness to give you what you need. Yet you want
them to treat you like a man. But you put
yourself into position of being treated like a child. That's
not making you wrong. I want to give you the
whole picture. Children are dependent. Men are independent or inter dependent,
meaning men stand on their own or as they're standing
(18:53):
on their own, they have other people that they can
lean on, other people that lean on them. If you're
dependent upon your mother and your sister financially, that puts
you in a really bad position considering you already have
a broken relationship with them. And you know, I just
(19:14):
always try to bring it to their attention, like you know,
we need to position ourselves in a more better way
to be able to be ah uh, good structure for
you know, best aims for the two choosing is coming
up in our family, and I mean they disregarded, is
that what they want? So let me just share to you.
(19:39):
When you were a child and you were dependent upon
your parents, you had to accommodate, tolerate, put up with
except what was going on. You had to you were
dependent upon them for food and clothing and shelter and
all of those things. Yeah, but now you're an adult.
(20:00):
You're an adult, so your first priority, beloved, has to
be getting yourself on your feet where you no longer
have to be dependent upon people who don't want the
same thing that you want. You're dependent upon them, and
yet you're telling them what they need to do to
(20:20):
become more healthy, so they can take care of you?
I wrong? Wrong? What would be required for you to
be able to get up, stand up and be your
own man? That you want to set them to recognize
you out as basically need and taking care of myself
(20:43):
and you know, being there for myself emotionally, physically, and
just you know, focusing on who I am outside of them. Okay,
but right now you say you're financially dependent upon them,
So so is there anything you can do about that?
What do you? I mean, it will take time, but
(21:04):
it's that's something that you can focus on for yourself
because a man has to stand up, and sometimes a
man doesn't know he can stand up until he's falling down. Right,
maybe you've fallen down. But now to prove to yourself
the value and power of your manhood, you've got to
(21:25):
get yourself up. They can't respect you if you're dependent
on them, beloved, they cannot. And no amount of you
talking to them, no amount of you trying to convince them,
no amount of you making them wrong and then making
you wrong, it's gonna change that. Are you physically able
to take care of yourself financially? I mean, can you
(21:48):
work and you walk? Okay? Yes, I'm working now and
I'm actually at school, so I'm thinking about getting the
second job as well too. But UM, I do want
to say this. UM. I read the book The Spirit
of a Man and it's it's one um chapter in
(22:09):
there where you said how your experience was with you're
dead and how you've seen him hurt man. And you know,
that is something that I've experienced within my dad and
something that you know, he's he's kind of professed to
(22:30):
me that he received from my mother. And it's like, um, emotionally,
I have became my mother's emotional boyfriend, and you know,
I've been manipulated, you know, in that space many of times.
And like when you're so close like that with your
(22:54):
you know, mom, and in that space, it becomes a
very sneaky situation because you know, your emotions are tied
to it and you know other things such as like
you know, your traumatic experiences. And I'm just like, you know,
when I try to come to her to talk about it,
(23:15):
it was just missed and you know, not recognized. And
actually you know, she kind of hear me in the
direction of going to church to be able to deal with,
you know, those questions that are born to her as
far as taking accountability, and that left me in a
(23:35):
rough space too, because you know, I'm aware that people
can neglect you spiritually and you know, manipulate you spiritually,
and that's something that you know, I'm not too well
and experiencing because it's like you are playing with God. Okay,
(23:58):
I see, I have to give you the blue pill
because you're not taking the red pill very well. The
blue pill is the absolute rock, gut truth, and the
red pill is you know, we can dance around and
keep things as as they want, you know. Uh So
if you're willing, I'm gonna give you the blue pill
right now, you're ready. I would say, clutch your pearls,
(24:22):
but I don't think you have any on hold on
to it. Okay, hold on to it right now because
we're going in way down where we go. Beloved, you
have identified yourself as a victim. You're a victim of everything.
You're a victim of your mother, You're a victim of trauma,
You're a victim of circumstances. And until you clean that up,
(24:45):
until you stand fully in your I am nous, which
is what the eye of Horrace tells you, look within
your freedom is within, it's not without. You are participating
in your own abuse. You're participating. You've made yourself dependent
as a child, and yet you want them to treat
you as a man. You made yourself emotionally dependent upon
(25:08):
your mother. Your mother is not going to acknowledge what
happened to you if she didn't protect you and provide
the nurturing and support you needed as a child. What
makes you think she's gonna do it now? And she
may not know how you know as a mom to
say that your child was in harm's way, that something
traumatic happened to your child on your watch and you
(25:30):
don't know what to do about it. That's real hard
for a mom. And if she's not doing her work,
if she's leaning independent upon Jesus to fix it, you understand,
as opposed to developing the skills and the tools that
she needs, then she can't do it. And it's like
that little boy inside of you keeps warning something from
(25:52):
her that she has demonstrated she can't give. So for
you to continue to do that keeps you a victim.
So you to decide you're not gonna be a victim.
You're gonna put on your big boy draws. You're gonna
start creating clear boundaries. You're gonna start dealing with her
like a man and stop hanging on her breast expecting
(26:14):
how to breastfeed you. That's the blue pail. You're not
a victim. Everything happened the way it's supposed to happen
for you to learn what you need to learn. If
your mother has made you your emotional boyfriend, quit her.
I don't want to hear it. I'm not talking to
you about that. Don't talk to me about that. I
gotta go talk to you later, see you soon, whatever,
(26:35):
in a respectable way. Listening to you talk to me
like that doesn't make me feel good, So I'm not
gonna listen. Can we talk about something else, because I
don't want to hear that. Whatever it is you have
to do, you want to be a man, be a man,
all right, and stop being a little boy trying to
(26:56):
get his mother to breastfeed him. She can't do it,
or she doesn't want to, or she doesn't know how.
Doesn't make her a bad person. But you keep victimizing yourself,
and that has got to stop. The mere fact that
you don't own your experiences. You talk about everything as
though it's out there. Says to me that you're looking
for external validation and external support for what's going on
(27:21):
inside of you. I've said to you three times, own it,
own it, I, my my mother, my sister, me, I,
and you keep talking about we they them us, no, no,
no no. This is your stop and your victim. So
you need to get back in the spirit of a man.
M h. You need to get back in there and
(27:43):
stop looking at them and look at you. What do
you want? What do you want and what do you need?
And how can you give it to yourself? Hear me?
How can you give it to yourself? Take a breath,
take a bra I want you to stand fully in
(28:05):
the truth of who you are as a powerful black
man doing important and courageous things in the world. That's
what I want for you, and I think that's what
you want for yourself. Would that be accurate? But your
mother can't give it to you. She can't give it
to you. So if you've got to work two jobs,
(28:28):
three jobs, six jobs, if you've got to sleep standing
up in the corner for fifteen minutes and go to
the next job, whatever it takes you fell down, you
gotta pick yourself up and you can do it, because
I want you to know I hear you, and I'm
giving you the blue pill, not the red pill. And
(28:49):
I'm not dismissing you. I'm not diminishing you. I know
I hear what you said. You were traumatized and victimized
as a child, and your parents did nothing about it,
and they still do nothing about it, and your mother
and sister today traumatize you, diminish you, dismiss you, and
it makes you feel unworthy. I want you to know
(29:10):
I hear you, but I just can't get on the
step that you're on that they should do this, and
you want them to do later for them? What are
you gonna do? We'll talk more about it when we
come back. Welcome back to the our spot. Let's get
(29:31):
back to the conversation. You're having a temper tantrum right now.
Your life is a temper tantrum that you are willing
to do, trying to do anything to get them to
acknowledge how wrong they treated you before. They're not gonna
do it. They're not gonna do it. Maybe they can't,
maybe they don't know how to belove it. What are
you going to do? As you said before, how I
(29:54):
took the external to try to, I guess, cope with
know certain traumas and everything in my life. And that's
honestly what I've did. You know, I've set right here
and smoked, you know, and and thought I could be
able to be satisfied sexually, you know by that experience.
(30:18):
You know, it's just all of that I've I've done
throughout you know, the years of growing up and now
you know I'm in school working, So I mean I've
had I've took taken the necess the necessary actions to
be able to rebuild myself and take ownership with my
(30:39):
own life. And you're doing great, and I appreciate it.
I just heard you say I've done, I've done, I've done.
So that's a ship right there, because you started out
talking about we they us, No, No, you just owned it.
Just that just that quickly. Good for you. What is
(31:00):
your vision? Are you living with your mom? Do you
live with her? By? When are you gonna be out
of her house? Bye? When I'm giving you a date,
let's go bye. When when you look at the money
that you have, the money that you make, what you're doing,
what do you need? By? When can you make a
commitment to yourself to be out of her house. You
(31:22):
quit her not a boyfriend, no more. I'm out by
when by the end of next years? Next year? Oh no,
oh no, no, no, no, no, no, not by the
end of next year. You are not going to victimize
yourself for a whole another year. I can't support you
in that, absolutely not, absolutely not. How many days a
(31:43):
week do you go to school? Too? With three days?
And I paid for school out of pocket, and I travel,
you know, from city, from one city to the next city.
So it's like I have to kind of sacrifice are
some things to kind of be able to reposition myself
(32:04):
in a better space. You mean you travel out from
one city to another to go to school or one
city to another world of world? Okay? Can you go
to school where you go to work or that's not possible,
that's not possible. That I go to a private school okay,
and I work at a school. So it's like, yeah, okay,
can you uh so to travel that that kind of
(32:25):
diminishes your your You need a coach because this is due.
But you can do this in six months. You can
do this in six months. You can you can do
it in six months. But you've got to set your bitch.
Stop looking at your mother. She can't give you what
you need. She's not gonna give it to you. Don't
make her a bad person. I'm not talking about your mama.
(32:47):
Don't think I'm talking about your mama not. I'm talking
about you, Mr, Mr Man. I need you to be
in a manly position so that people can see you
as a man. If you don't get nothing else out
of today. Children are dependent, Adults stand on their own.
(33:08):
And as you're standing on your own, then you create
the family that you need, the community that you need,
the support that you need. Stop trying to get to
your from your mother and your sister what you think
they didn't give you or they need to give you.
And it's hard when when you're the one in the
family trying to break the pathology. And that's what it
(33:29):
sounds like to me. It's hard. That's hard because you're
out there, you out there on your own. They listen.
You speak in a foreign language to them, when you
talk about we need to get together. They can't. It's Greek.
They don't even understand that. I want to know when
you're gonna be out your mama's house. That's what I
want to know. You got to accept the vision, even
(33:50):
if you don't know how, you know what, when, by when?
This is uh, you know, give yourself six months, eight
months at the most, and every little penny. If you
got to eat noodles and noodles every day, if you
have to wash your clothes with a bar ivory soap
so you don't have to spend money in the largry,
(34:11):
if you have to what I don't know, whatever it is,
whatever you have to do. That's how a man stands
for himself. I don't know how, I don't know when,
I don't know where, but this is what I'm doing.
I'm getting out of here. I'm gonna stand on my own.
Does that frighten you a little? A little? Good? I
know I have to. I have to because I mean,
(34:34):
the things that we need to do for ourselves. Sometimes
it's scary sometimes, you know, but it's good for us
because it lets us to push past those mental, any
emotional boundaries that we set. Okay, ce see now you
went back to the outside. We set for ourselves. No,
I'm scared. I set for myself. Come on, let me
(34:57):
hear it. Come on, give it to me, give it
to me. Yes, I know I need to move past
those men cling emotional boundaries there for myself and me
and myself to feel uncomfortable. Come on, my own full potential. Yes,
(35:18):
that's what I'm talking about. Did you hear that? Now?
Doesn't that sound better than we in us? And they? Yeah?
Come on, you only need one person in the stands
cheering you on. Yes, and that one person is you. Yes,
(35:41):
I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do this. I'm going
to do this, and you can because obviously you've reached
your breaking point. You don't want to be a little
boy anymore waiting for somebody just to firms to serve you,
nurture you. What would your grandmother's that? What would your
(36:01):
grandmother say? He baby me, I'm gonna tell you. And
she really gave me something like uncondiced my love, like
but I expected that from her because she she gave
us something that she never received. That's what I get.
And you know, just experiencing that and having that it
(36:23):
was really a pillar like that was the structure of
my whole family. But I'm thankful for because I feel
like it was all meant for a specific reason, God
reveals it to me, you know all the time. It's
just that sometimes I do be scared, you know, stepping
(36:47):
out into the unknown. If you have to uh, if
you said you read Spirit of a Man, then you've
got to bless your head every day. You've got to
bless your head every day. It's right in Spirit of
a Man in chapter four, the Spirit of your Head,
it says, it starts out, you've got to get the
(37:08):
mind cleaned out before you can put the truth in it.
And the truth is you can do this. The truth
is you are a man. The truth is you have
what it takes to take care of yourself. And you
bless your head every single day. You bless your eyes,
you bless your ears, you bless your mouth. It's right
in the book. Go get that book. And if you
need another copy, go get you another copy, get a
(37:30):
used copy because you gotta save money for your new place. Yeah.
Take it. It'll walk you through everything you need to do.
It'll walk you through how to breathe in the in
the In what is this chapter four or five, there
(37:53):
is a a affirmation. There's an affirmation in there, and
it says that us there is a universal power seeking
an outlet through me. The instrument of that power is
my mind. Today, I believe in the power. I believe
the power is right where I am. You gotta say
(38:13):
that every day today. I accept the presence of this power. Today,
I believe the power is operating in all of my
life's affairs. Today, I acknowledge that there is a divine
power instructing me in all that I do. I affirm
the divine power. I affirm joy in my life. I
know that every atom, every cell, every tissue, every organ
(38:38):
in my body is brought into perfect and divine wholiness
and harmony. I am a man. You say that every
day and see how quickly you get your place. The
honorable Mayor how Washington, who was the mayor of Chicago,
he said, it's not the man, it's the plan. What's
your plan and plan to give you yourself what you
(39:02):
didn't get from them. That has to be your plan.
And it is scary good because if you don't have
a little p running down your leg, then your plan
ain't big enough. I gotta have a little p running
down your leg. Oh lord, I'm so scared. I'm being
on myself, but I'm gonna keep on going. No more victim,
(39:24):
No more victim, And that is what's gonna craft and
structure and create the man that you are becoming. You
can't just sit around and talk about the plan. You
got to activate it. So you tell me what you're
gonna do different when you hang up this phone. I
want to know what are you going to do different?
First of all, I'm giving you eight months to get
(39:46):
out of your mother's house, and I think you can
do it in six, but I'm gonna give you eight
because it's getting cold unless you live in the warm climate.
I'm gonna start right now my plan to move into
my own space, to be my own without depending on
others to validating. Yeah, and every time they dismiss you
(40:07):
or diminish you, or deny you or whatever, just say,
you know what, I'm acting like a child. I can't
expect them to treat me like a man, acting like
a child. Because the thing is, you would think that
because you're trying to advance yourself, better yourself, you're working,
you're going to school, that their support of you would be,
you know, free and loving. But they can't. They can't.
(40:30):
They don't know how, baby, And for you to keep
asking it victimizes yourself. No longer. I'm not a victim.
Let me hear you say that. I'm not a victim here,
no longer. I'm a bacon. Yeah, I'm a man with
a plan. I'm a man with a plane. Alrighty, here
we go, and it's a habit now. So you'll still go,
(40:57):
you'll still go back, and you'll still asking forget that.
And when you when you're when you do that, when
you find yourself leaning on your mom or being manipulated
or whatever the scenario is, just go to the mirror
in the bathroom and slap the first person that comes up.
(41:21):
And you slap that person and you say, stop it,
stop it, stop it right now. I'm a man with
a plan. And you know, I don't know where you live,
but I can almost guarantee you somewhere in your community,
maybe in a community center, maybe in a church. I
don't know that there's a men's group, that there's a
(41:44):
men's support group. Because what you need you can't get
from your mother right now. You need to get it
from other man. And it doesn't sound like your dad
has It doesn't sound or you know what, let me
tell you what A man would do. Drn Akbar taught
me this what a man would do would he would
see the need and fill it. So maybe you need
(42:07):
to go to the community center, or you need to
go to the church and start the support group for
other men in your situation, men who are recreating, redefining,
rebuilding their lives. Maybe it's just three of your maybe
it's three or four of you. I don't know. But
if you're a man and you need something, make it happen.
(42:27):
You say that because there's something that I was, you know,
urgerly coming into planers of making happen. So, yeah, thank
you for you know, affirming affirming. I'm affirming that idea. Yeah,
and see you have good ideas in your mind. Miss
(42:49):
the man. Now what you gotta do with a little
pee running down your leg is act on them. I'm
sure there's three or four or five other men in
your community. Tell them you to create a brotherhood circle
where y'all can talk to each other and support each other.
Must be three or four or five other men that
would help. Y'all could walk through that book together, bless
(43:10):
your heads together. I ain't worried about you. You just
need a little guy, Okay. So I want you to
call me. I'm gonna give you eight months. But if
it happens before you call me back and you tell
my producers, I'm out. I'm on my own. That's all
(43:32):
I want to know. Okay, tell me what you know
now that you didn't know when you call. Tell me
what you know now that you didn't know when you call. Everything.
I'm looking on the outside, live within me. Bang, that's it.
I don't need. Don't say another word. Don't say another word.
(43:55):
That's it. Get your book, get your plan and go
ye four and prosper. Thank you, Thank you. I'm looking
forward to hearing from me. Love you much, Take good care, okay,
bye bye. I remember one time my son said to me,
(44:16):
my son with whom I have a great relationship, my
son who has had his struggles and his trials in life.
He said to me, Ma, I can't expect you to
give me that you're not a man. Well as a mother,
I said, well, how dare you? I'm the mommy. I
(44:38):
have to give you everything. You're supposed to depend on
me for everything. And he was very clear, Mam, you
can't give me that you're not a man, because the
truth is men say things in ways that women don't
say them, because men experienced them in ways that women
(44:59):
don't experience and stem and very often the women don't
give man the space to do the man thing, you know,
because we are mothers and we are nurturers and we
do take care of everything. There are some things that
men need that their mothers simply don't have to give.
(45:23):
And once a man recognizes that it is is responsibility
to go wherever, to whomever, to do whatever it is,
to give it to himself, particularly when the situation reveals
that the thing you're requesting of your mother she simply
(45:44):
doesn't have to give. But there comes a moment when
as a woman, as a mother, as a sister, you
just gotta step up and let a man be a man.
Wasn't the prince that said let a woman be a
woman and let a man be a man. Now a
challenge comes when he doesn't know how to be a man,
and that's when there has to be a man to
(46:08):
man conversation. Nothing else is going to suffice, nothing else
is gonna fill the need. I hope this has been
helpful to someone, And if you have a question about
this or any other relationship issue, you can call me
live at seven seven five three zero seven seven seven
six eight now be sure to follow me on social
(46:30):
media for all of the calling times and until then,
stay in peace and not pieces. The R Spot is
a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, visit the I Heart
(46:52):
Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
I am Younger, your host for this journey. I was
a hopeless love aholic but just could not get my
love to work. Then, after a series of heartbreaks and
deep heartache, I finally got clear about what love is
and what it is not. I want to share some
(00:22):
of what I've learned about love aholism. Welcome to the
Our Spot, a production of shondaland Audio in partnership with
I Heart Radio. One of the quickest ways to tear
(00:47):
your relationship down, and to tear yourself down in the process,
is to expect others to give you what you're not
giving to yourself. No matter what the reason is, you
can't give it, but more importantly, if you don't have it,
you can't receive it. So very often in our relationships,
(01:11):
we make other people responsible for giving to us that
which we can only give to ourselves. Sometimes it comes
from childhood trauma. Sometimes it comes from laziness. Sometimes it
comes from just not having the information we need to
(01:32):
make the next most appropriate steps, and instead of researching
in and doing what's required on our own, we lean on,
depend on expect other people to do it for us.
I'm telling you it'll tear your relationship down at all times,
(01:52):
in all situations, under all circumstances, you must vote for you.
You have to vote for you have to do what's
right for you. You have to do what's best for you.
Because sometimes the thing that you're expecting the other person
to give you A they don't have, B, they don't
(02:15):
know how to give it to you, and see they're
just not willing. Doesn't mean you have to do without.
It simply means you have to figure out how to
give it to yourself. Good afternoon, beloved, Welcome to the
art spot. What is the challenge, issue, dilemma, relationship problem
(02:37):
you've got going on that we can nibblong together today? Oh,
thank you for calling. Basically, you know, um, I just
feel like I'm emotionally neglected by the name you know,
women in my life. And you know, every since I
(02:59):
give the death of my grandmother, she like she really
you know, let me experience love as a supernatural level,
and I mean every since being you know, I'm filling
in a space where it's just me. You know, at
some point, um, I've been used as an emotional disposal
(03:24):
for you know, the main to women in my life,
and it has kind of shaped my perception of you know,
wanting to be by myself versus you know, being with someone.
And I mean it is, you know, really really challenge
(03:45):
my way of thinking when it came to when it
comes to, you know, as I look at a woman,
you know, Okay, you said two main women in your life.
What does that mean? Basically the women that have been
a part of my life ever since I was young,
basically my mother and my sister. Mother and sister. You
(04:07):
feel emotionally neglected. What does that mean? Emotionally neglected? What
does that mean? Or how does that look in your
life as I see it? When I, you know, come
to them to express myself or to try to have
some type of conversation, I get dismissed, I get the mean,
(04:28):
I get you know, down trotted, and it's just basically
taken my masculinity as as a joke, you know, like
is not being recognized. Okay, So I hear a lot
of um code language and what you're sharing. You said
(04:53):
they take your masculinity as a joke. You said that
the way you've poortrade yourself. So I need you to
trust yourself enough to break that down for me. What
does that mean? They take your masculinity as a joke
because of the way you portrayed yourself at certain times.
(05:17):
What does that mean? Basically, um, not having a good
structure of a male figure in my life. It conditioned
me to not understand who I was as a little boy,
you know, growing up around women and you know, being
(05:37):
looking through certain traumas. It's shaped my perception of how
I be myself to a point where you know, I
demean myself for years and didn't understand who I would
as far as my sexuality. So are you saying to
me that you're a gay man? No, I'm not actually
saying that. I'm saying, um, redefining who I am as
(06:02):
a man. Okay, So you are redefining who you men
are as a man in terms of, um, how you
present yourself in the world, in terms of how you
identify sexually, in terms of how you want to be treated.
Is that accurate? Yea, So are you clear about what
(06:23):
that definition is? Are you clear? Are you still in
the discovery process? I'm still in this discovery process because
I feel like life is a discovering process in itself,
and I mean with everything that we are. Uh, you know,
I guess present it with throughout you know, the spiritual
(06:46):
journey that we're own. It's like, you know, we have
a lot of stuff that we have to kind of
dismantle in our mind to be able to move forward.
So okay, so I want you to own all of that.
I want you to own all of that. I have
a lot of things I need to dismantle in my
mind as I moved through my spiritual journey because you're
(07:09):
externalizing it. So when you put it outside of yourself,
it's like you're talking about somebody else as opposed to
owning what it is that you're doing. Does that make sense?
So then when you say, as I move through the
spiritual journey, simply means that you're acknowledging to yourself that's
(07:32):
your own a journey, which it sounds like, is what
you want them to do. But if you're not doing it,
how can you expect them to do it. You're not
acknowledging your own journey, but you want other people to
recognize and acknowledge it. So that's why I'm encouraging you
to own it. I wouldn't necessarily say I don't acknowledge
(07:54):
the journey or I'm owned because it's like when I
come to those other individuals that you know I'm around,
such as my the other the two women in my
life that you know, I leave you so much toward,
you know, when it comes to having that family bonding experience,
(08:15):
they make it evidence that it's not gonna happen. And
that's that in itself is dis empowering for me as
a man, because it's like I have to constantly revert
back to myself and if I have a certain opinion
or a how cannot say, a mindfulness of something, it's
(08:39):
always being not being accepted. In the other words, dismissed, denied. Yeah,
why why do you tell yourself they do that? Why
my sister and my mother dismissed, demean denying me? Because
because they're powerful women and they have a how can
(09:04):
I say, it seems like they have a um just
them mindset where I've always been an outcast of some sort,
you know what I'm saying. And why are you an outcast?
I guess because it's just the way how me and
my sister's childhoods. We're not together, you know, and now
(09:28):
since we're older, it's it's more evident that I get
the feeling as if I'm not needed. So you and
your sister weren't raised together with your mother. Is that
what you're saying? Okay, you were raised by your grandmother.
She was raised by my grandmother, and I was raised
in the household between my parents, and it was you know,
(09:50):
a lot of traumatic experiences that took place as far
as you know, me being um molested and everything. And
I mean it was just lot, and I mean I
have to revise it, all of that now, you know,
trying to we define myself as a man. Okay, Okay,
(10:13):
take a breath with me. I want to share with
you when I'm hearing, and it may or may not
be true for you, and that's okay. But if there's
anything here that you can feel or sense or receive,
then we can dig a little deeper right there. Okay,
(10:37):
So I heard you say that you were raised in
a difficult environment between your parents where you experience some trauma,
including being sexually molested. Right I'm going to take a
leap here and say that when that happened, it was
(11:00):
an addressed accurate it was it wasn't addressed. Okay, did
they know or did they know and not address it?
They knew, and they did not address it. It kind
of it kind of weighed down on their relationship. And
(11:21):
that's what I guess broke up that um, you know
union between them two. And you know, for years it
was like I didn't get therapy. So it was like
boom boom boom. You know, traumatic experience after traumatic experience.
And I mean that that really, you know, challenges somebody mentally. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
(11:45):
So I want to say, I want to ask how
old were you? Do you remember how old you were
when it was the first violation. I think I was
a leave about The youngest was leave about six or seven.
So you had a traumatic experience involving molestation that was
(12:06):
not addressed. I can't imagine that. As a child, you
made up in your mind, I don't matter, I'm not important,
what happens to me doesn't matter, and I'm out here
on my own. Does any of that sound familiar? That
sounds familiar to you? And is that not what you're
(12:27):
experiencing right now? That you don't matter, you're not important,
and what happens to you doesn't matter, and you're out
there on your own. Is that what you're experiencing now?
So you're kind of re reliving some of the decisions
or the beliefs that you came to in your childhood. Now,
(12:50):
why do you tell yourself that they didn't address it?
If they knew, your parents, knew, your mother, your sister,
if they knew, why do you tell yourself that they
didn't address it. They didn't address it? Because why because
I didn't receive the nurturing care that I thought that
(13:11):
I deserved, you know, solely from them, right? And I
mean I understand in in a family, everybody has their
own situations that they're dealing with. And it's like when
you're a child in the situation, and how can I
say how you can say, listen, this is how you
(13:33):
can say, when I was a child in that situation,
I did not receive the emotional care and support that
I needed. Is that true? Yes? Lam? Can you say that?
Can you own it? When I was a child, I
didn't receive the emotional nurturing and care that I needed.
(13:59):
Can you say that? Let me hear you say that.
And I was the child I did not receive the
emotional support and care and that made me feel finish
that and that made me feel like I was neglected.
I was worth Yeah, I was neglected. I didn't matter.
(14:25):
I was worthless. And today your mother and your sister dismiss, demean, diminish,
and deny you, which triggers back up the feelings that
I don't matter, I'm neglected, because that's what you said,
that's the first thing out your mouth. You are emotionally
(14:48):
neglected by the two women in your life. So what's
happening is you are re traumatized by their behavior. Does
that make sense, is ma'am? What I want you to
hear is that their behavior is one thing that's real,
(15:09):
that's true for you, But the energy, the trauma is
in you. So I really want to encourage you right
now in your life to focus on neutralizing, healing, eliminating
that trauma, because trying to get from them now what
(15:35):
you didn't get from them before is retraumatizing you. You're
still trying to get from them now, the care, the nurturing,
the support that you need as a man. You're trying
to get it from them now when they've already demonstrated
either they can't give it, they won't give it, they
(15:56):
don't want to give it. They already demonstrated that to
you as a child. So what do we do now?
We'll talk about that right after this break. Welcome back
to the our spot. Let's pick up where we left are.
(16:17):
Tell me what you hear me saying. It doesn't matter
what words you use. You don't have to repeat it.
I just want to know what you hear in your
mind that I'm saying. It's the saying that you know
I heard all my life. When a person shows you
who they all believed in the first time, and it
doesn't make them bad people. They may not have the
(16:37):
capacity to give you what you need, and insisting or
wanting or needing them to do it means that you
are abusing yourself now. You are neglecting yourself now. You
are diminishing yourself now. You are denying yourself now because
(17:00):
they can't give you now what you didn't get before
and they may not be able to give it to you.
All Right, I received it, And I just want to know.
When you depend on someone financially, how like that is
a form of financial abase and neglect, right, Okay, So
you're dependent upon your mother and your sister financially, is
(17:24):
that what I'm hearing you say? Okay, go ahead, why
is that? Why are you dependent upon them financially because
I didn't push myself to the fullest potential when it
came to me having to learn, you know, how to
conduct my finances in a responsible way. Okay, so that's
(17:45):
one of the things that you're learning. Yes, and um,
you know I had to basically pick up and do
that myself. And I mean it's not a problem. I
just look at it as you know. Yeh, the village
has an understanding on their finding a because they should
be able to pass that down on to the next
(18:05):
that's coming up in the tribe. You know, that's my
perception of it. Takes a villains to raise a child.
But you're not a child. But you're not a child.
You're a man. You are a man who is depending. Okay,
so listen to this. You are a man who is
dependent upon people who don't have the capacity or the
(18:29):
willingness to give you what you need. Yet you want
them to treat you like a man. But you put
yourself into position of being treated like a child. That's
not making you wrong. I want to give you the
whole picture. Children are dependent. Men are independent or inter dependent,
meaning men stand on their own or as they're standing
(18:53):
on their own, they have other people that they can
lean on, other people that lean on them. If you're
dependent upon your mother and your sister financially, that puts
you in a really bad position considering you already have
a broken relationship with them. And you know, I just
(19:14):
always try to bring it to their attention, like you know,
we need to position ourselves in a more better way
to be able to be ah uh, good structure for
you know, best aims for the two choosing is coming
up in our family, and I mean they disregarded, is
that what they want? So let me just share to you.
(19:39):
When you were a child and you were dependent upon
your parents, you had to accommodate, tolerate, put up with
except what was going on. You had to you were
dependent upon them for food and clothing and shelter and
all of those things. Yeah, but now you're an adult.
(20:00):
You're an adult, so your first priority, beloved, has to
be getting yourself on your feet where you no longer
have to be dependent upon people who don't want the
same thing that you want. You're dependent upon them, and
yet you're telling them what they need to do to
(20:20):
become more healthy, so they can take care of you?
I wrong? Wrong? What would be required for you to
be able to get up, stand up and be your
own man? That you want to set them to recognize
you out as basically need and taking care of myself
(20:43):
and you know, being there for myself emotionally, physically, and
just you know, focusing on who I am outside of them. Okay,
but right now you say you're financially dependent upon them,
So so is there anything you can do about that?
What do you? I mean, it will take time, but
(21:04):
it's that's something that you can focus on for yourself
because a man has to stand up, and sometimes a
man doesn't know he can stand up until he's falling down. Right,
maybe you've fallen down. But now to prove to yourself
the value and power of your manhood, you've got to
(21:25):
get yourself up. They can't respect you if you're dependent
on them, beloved, they cannot. And no amount of you
talking to them, no amount of you trying to convince them,
no amount of you making them wrong and then making
you wrong, it's gonna change that. Are you physically able
to take care of yourself financially? I mean, can you
(21:48):
work and you walk? Okay? Yes, I'm working now and
I'm actually at school, so I'm thinking about getting the
second job as well too. But UM, I do want
to say this. UM. I read the book The Spirit
of a Man and it's it's one um chapter in
(22:09):
there where you said how your experience was with you're
dead and how you've seen him hurt man. And you know,
that is something that I've experienced within my dad and
something that you know, he's he's kind of professed to
(22:30):
me that he received from my mother. And it's like, um, emotionally,
I have became my mother's emotional boyfriend, and you know,
I've been manipulated, you know, in that space many of times.
And like when you're so close like that with your
(22:54):
you know, mom, and in that space, it becomes a
very sneaky situation because you know, your emotions are tied
to it and you know other things such as like
you know, your traumatic experiences. And I'm just like, you know,
when I try to come to her to talk about it,
(23:15):
it was just missed and you know, not recognized. And
actually you know, she kind of hear me in the
direction of going to church to be able to deal with,
you know, those questions that are born to her as
far as taking accountability, and that left me in a
(23:35):
rough space too, because you know, I'm aware that people
can neglect you spiritually and you know, manipulate you spiritually,
and that's something that you know, I'm not too well
and experiencing because it's like you are playing with God. Okay,
(23:58):
I see, I have to give you the blue pill
because you're not taking the red pill very well. The
blue pill is the absolute rock, gut truth, and the
red pill is you know, we can dance around and
keep things as as they want, you know. Uh So
if you're willing, I'm gonna give you the blue pill
right now, you're ready. I would say, clutch your pearls,
(24:22):
but I don't think you have any on hold on
to it. Okay, hold on to it right now because
we're going in way down where we go. Beloved, you
have identified yourself as a victim. You're a victim of everything.
You're a victim of your mother, You're a victim of trauma,
You're a victim of circumstances. And until you clean that up,
(24:45):
until you stand fully in your I am nous, which
is what the eye of Horrace tells you, look within
your freedom is within, it's not without. You are participating
in your own abuse. You're participating. You've made yourself dependent
as a child, and yet you want them to treat
you as a man. You made yourself emotionally dependent upon
(25:08):
your mother. Your mother is not going to acknowledge what
happened to you if she didn't protect you and provide
the nurturing and support you needed as a child. What
makes you think she's gonna do it now? And she
may not know how you know as a mom to
say that your child was in harm's way, that something
traumatic happened to your child on your watch and you
(25:30):
don't know what to do about it. That's real hard
for a mom. And if she's not doing her work,
if she's leaning independent upon Jesus to fix it, you understand,
as opposed to developing the skills and the tools that
she needs, then she can't do it. And it's like
that little boy inside of you keeps warning something from
(25:52):
her that she has demonstrated she can't give. So for
you to continue to do that keeps you a victim.
So you to decide you're not gonna be a victim.
You're gonna put on your big boy draws. You're gonna
start creating clear boundaries. You're gonna start dealing with her
like a man and stop hanging on her breast expecting
(26:14):
how to breastfeed you. That's the blue pail. You're not
a victim. Everything happened the way it's supposed to happen
for you to learn what you need to learn. If
your mother has made you your emotional boyfriend, quit her.
I don't want to hear it. I'm not talking to
you about that. Don't talk to me about that. I
gotta go talk to you later, see you soon, whatever,
(26:35):
in a respectable way. Listening to you talk to me
like that doesn't make me feel good, So I'm not
gonna listen. Can we talk about something else, because I
don't want to hear that. Whatever it is you have
to do, you want to be a man, be a man,
all right, and stop being a little boy trying to
(26:56):
get his mother to breastfeed him. She can't do it,
or she doesn't want to, or she doesn't know how.
Doesn't make her a bad person. But you keep victimizing yourself,
and that has got to stop. The mere fact that
you don't own your experiences. You talk about everything as
though it's out there. Says to me that you're looking
for external validation and external support for what's going on
(27:21):
inside of you. I've said to you three times, own it,
own it, I, my my mother, my sister, me, I,
and you keep talking about we they them us, no, no,
no no. This is your stop and your victim. So
you need to get back in the spirit of a man.
M h. You need to get back in there and
(27:43):
stop looking at them and look at you. What do
you want? What do you want and what do you need?
And how can you give it to yourself? Hear me?
How can you give it to yourself? Take a breath,
take a bra I want you to stand fully in
(28:05):
the truth of who you are as a powerful black
man doing important and courageous things in the world. That's
what I want for you, and I think that's what
you want for yourself. Would that be accurate? But your
mother can't give it to you. She can't give it
to you. So if you've got to work two jobs,
(28:28):
three jobs, six jobs, if you've got to sleep standing
up in the corner for fifteen minutes and go to
the next job, whatever it takes you fell down, you
gotta pick yourself up and you can do it, because
I want you to know I hear you, and I'm
giving you the blue pill, not the red pill. And
(28:49):
I'm not dismissing you. I'm not diminishing you. I know
I hear what you said. You were traumatized and victimized
as a child, and your parents did nothing about it,
and they still do nothing about it, and your mother
and sister today traumatize you, diminish you, dismiss you, and
it makes you feel unworthy. I want you to know
(29:10):
I hear you, but I just can't get on the
step that you're on that they should do this, and
you want them to do later for them? What are
you gonna do? We'll talk more about it when we
come back. Welcome back to the our spot. Let's get
(29:31):
back to the conversation. You're having a temper tantrum right now.
Your life is a temper tantrum that you are willing
to do, trying to do anything to get them to
acknowledge how wrong they treated you before. They're not gonna
do it. They're not gonna do it. Maybe they can't,
maybe they don't know how to belove it. What are
you going to do? As you said before, how I
(29:54):
took the external to try to, I guess, cope with
know certain traumas and everything in my life. And that's
honestly what I've did. You know, I've set right here
and smoked, you know, and and thought I could be
able to be satisfied sexually, you know by that experience.
(30:18):
You know, it's just all of that I've I've done
throughout you know, the years of growing up and now
you know I'm in school working, So I mean I've
had I've took taken the necess the necessary actions to
be able to rebuild myself and take ownership with my
(30:39):
own life. And you're doing great, and I appreciate it.
I just heard you say I've done, I've done, I've done.
So that's a ship right there, because you started out
talking about we they us, No, No, you just owned it.
Just that just that quickly. Good for you. What is
(31:00):
your vision? Are you living with your mom? Do you
live with her? By? When are you gonna be out
of her house? Bye? When I'm giving you a date,
let's go bye. When when you look at the money
that you have, the money that you make, what you're doing,
what do you need? By? When can you make a
commitment to yourself to be out of her house. You
(31:22):
quit her not a boyfriend, no more. I'm out by
when by the end of next years? Next year? Oh no,
oh no, no, no, no, no, no, not by the
end of next year. You are not going to victimize
yourself for a whole another year. I can't support you
in that, absolutely not, absolutely not. How many days a
(31:43):
week do you go to school? Too? With three days?
And I paid for school out of pocket, and I travel,
you know, from city, from one city to the next city.
So it's like I have to kind of sacrifice are
some things to kind of be able to reposition myself
(32:04):
in a better space. You mean you travel out from
one city to another to go to school or one
city to another world of world? Okay? Can you go
to school where you go to work or that's not possible,
that's not possible. That I go to a private school okay,
and I work at a school. So it's like, yeah, okay,
can you uh so to travel that that kind of
(32:25):
diminishes your your You need a coach because this is due.
But you can do this in six months. You can
do this in six months. You can you can do
it in six months. But you've got to set your bitch.
Stop looking at your mother. She can't give you what
you need. She's not gonna give it to you. Don't
make her a bad person. I'm not talking about your mama.
(32:47):
Don't think I'm talking about your mama not. I'm talking
about you, Mr, Mr Man. I need you to be
in a manly position so that people can see you
as a man. If you don't get nothing else out
of today. Children are dependent, Adults stand on their own.
(33:08):
And as you're standing on your own, then you create
the family that you need, the community that you need,
the support that you need. Stop trying to get to
your from your mother and your sister what you think
they didn't give you or they need to give you.
And it's hard when when you're the one in the
family trying to break the pathology. And that's what it
(33:29):
sounds like to me. It's hard. That's hard because you're
out there, you out there on your own. They listen.
You speak in a foreign language to them, when you
talk about we need to get together. They can't. It's Greek.
They don't even understand that. I want to know when
you're gonna be out your mama's house. That's what I
want to know. You got to accept the vision, even
(33:50):
if you don't know how, you know what, when, by when?
This is uh, you know, give yourself six months, eight
months at the most, and every little penny. If you
got to eat noodles and noodles every day, if you
have to wash your clothes with a bar ivory soap
so you don't have to spend money in the largry,
(34:11):
if you have to what I don't know, whatever it is,
whatever you have to do. That's how a man stands
for himself. I don't know how, I don't know when,
I don't know where, but this is what I'm doing.
I'm getting out of here. I'm gonna stand on my own.
Does that frighten you a little? A little? Good? I
know I have to. I have to because I mean,
(34:34):
the things that we need to do for ourselves. Sometimes
it's scary sometimes, you know, but it's good for us
because it lets us to push past those mental, any
emotional boundaries that we set. Okay, ce see now you
went back to the outside. We set for ourselves. No,
I'm scared. I set for myself. Come on, let me
(34:57):
hear it. Come on, give it to me, give it
to me. Yes, I know I need to move past
those men cling emotional boundaries there for myself and me
and myself to feel uncomfortable. Come on, my own full potential. Yes,
(35:18):
that's what I'm talking about. Did you hear that? Now?
Doesn't that sound better than we in us? And they? Yeah?
Come on, you only need one person in the stands
cheering you on. Yes, and that one person is you. Yes,
(35:41):
I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do this. I'm going
to do this, and you can because obviously you've reached
your breaking point. You don't want to be a little
boy anymore waiting for somebody just to firms to serve you,
nurture you. What would your grandmother's that? What would your
(36:01):
grandmother say? He baby me, I'm gonna tell you. And
she really gave me something like uncondiced my love, like
but I expected that from her because she she gave
us something that she never received. That's what I get.
And you know, just experiencing that and having that it
(36:23):
was really a pillar like that was the structure of
my whole family. But I'm thankful for because I feel
like it was all meant for a specific reason, God
reveals it to me, you know all the time. It's
just that sometimes I do be scared, you know, stepping
(36:47):
out into the unknown. If you have to uh, if
you said you read Spirit of a Man, then you've
got to bless your head every day. You've got to
bless your head every day. It's right in Spirit of
a Man in chapter four, the Spirit of your Head,
it says, it starts out, you've got to get the
(37:08):
mind cleaned out before you can put the truth in it.
And the truth is you can do this. The truth
is you are a man. The truth is you have
what it takes to take care of yourself. And you
bless your head every single day. You bless your eyes,
you bless your ears, you bless your mouth. It's right
in the book. Go get that book. And if you
need another copy, go get you another copy, get a
(37:30):
used copy because you gotta save money for your new place. Yeah.
Take it. It'll walk you through everything you need to do.
It'll walk you through how to breathe in the in
the In what is this chapter four or five, there
(37:53):
is a a affirmation. There's an affirmation in there, and
it says that us there is a universal power seeking
an outlet through me. The instrument of that power is
my mind. Today, I believe in the power. I believe
the power is right where I am. You gotta say
(38:13):
that every day today. I accept the presence of this power. Today,
I believe the power is operating in all of my
life's affairs. Today, I acknowledge that there is a divine
power instructing me in all that I do. I affirm
the divine power. I affirm joy in my life. I
know that every atom, every cell, every tissue, every organ
(38:38):
in my body is brought into perfect and divine wholiness
and harmony. I am a man. You say that every
day and see how quickly you get your place. The
honorable Mayor how Washington, who was the mayor of Chicago,
he said, it's not the man, it's the plan. What's
your plan and plan to give you yourself what you
(39:02):
didn't get from them. That has to be your plan.
And it is scary good because if you don't have
a little p running down your leg, then your plan
ain't big enough. I gotta have a little p running
down your leg. Oh lord, I'm so scared. I'm being
on myself, but I'm gonna keep on going. No more victim,
(39:24):
No more victim, And that is what's gonna craft and
structure and create the man that you are becoming. You
can't just sit around and talk about the plan. You
got to activate it. So you tell me what you're
gonna do different when you hang up this phone. I
want to know what are you going to do different?
First of all, I'm giving you eight months to get
(39:46):
out of your mother's house, and I think you can
do it in six, but I'm gonna give you eight
because it's getting cold unless you live in the warm climate.
I'm gonna start right now my plan to move into
my own space, to be my own without depending on
others to validating. Yeah, and every time they dismiss you
(40:07):
or diminish you, or deny you or whatever, just say,
you know what, I'm acting like a child. I can't
expect them to treat me like a man, acting like
a child. Because the thing is, you would think that
because you're trying to advance yourself, better yourself, you're working,
you're going to school, that their support of you would be,
you know, free and loving. But they can't. They can't.
(40:30):
They don't know how, baby, And for you to keep
asking it victimizes yourself. No longer. I'm not a victim.
Let me hear you say that. I'm not a victim here,
no longer. I'm a bacon. Yeah, I'm a man with
a plan. I'm a man with a plane. Alrighty, here
we go, and it's a habit now. So you'll still go,
(40:57):
you'll still go back, and you'll still asking forget that.
And when you when you're when you do that, when
you find yourself leaning on your mom or being manipulated
or whatever the scenario is, just go to the mirror
in the bathroom and slap the first person that comes up.
(41:21):
And you slap that person and you say, stop it,
stop it, stop it right now. I'm a man with
a plan. And you know, I don't know where you live,
but I can almost guarantee you somewhere in your community,
maybe in a community center, maybe in a church. I
don't know that there's a men's group, that there's a
(41:44):
men's support group. Because what you need you can't get
from your mother right now. You need to get it
from other man. And it doesn't sound like your dad
has It doesn't sound or you know what, let me
tell you what A man would do. Drn Akbar taught
me this what a man would do would he would
see the need and fill it. So maybe you need
(42:07):
to go to the community center, or you need to
go to the church and start the support group for
other men in your situation, men who are recreating, redefining,
rebuilding their lives. Maybe it's just three of your maybe
it's three or four of you. I don't know. But
if you're a man and you need something, make it happen.
(42:27):
You say that because there's something that I was, you know,
urgerly coming into planers of making happen. So, yeah, thank
you for you know, affirming affirming. I'm affirming that idea. Yeah,
and see you have good ideas in your mind. Miss
(42:49):
the man. Now what you gotta do with a little
pee running down your leg is act on them. I'm
sure there's three or four or five other men in
your community. Tell them you to create a brotherhood circle
where y'all can talk to each other and support each other.
Must be three or four or five other men that
would help. Y'all could walk through that book together, bless
(43:10):
your heads together. I ain't worried about you. You just
need a little guy, Okay. So I want you to
call me. I'm gonna give you eight months. But if
it happens before you call me back and you tell
my producers, I'm out. I'm on my own. That's all
(43:32):
I want to know. Okay, tell me what you know
now that you didn't know when you call. Tell me
what you know now that you didn't know when you call. Everything.
I'm looking on the outside, live within me. Bang, that's it.
I don't need. Don't say another word. Don't say another word.
(43:55):
That's it. Get your book, get your plan and go
ye four and prosper. Thank you, Thank you. I'm looking
forward to hearing from me. Love you much, Take good care, okay,
bye bye. I remember one time my son said to me,
(44:16):
my son with whom I have a great relationship, my
son who has had his struggles and his trials in life.
He said to me, Ma, I can't expect you to
give me that you're not a man. Well as a mother,
I said, well, how dare you? I'm the mommy. I
(44:38):
have to give you everything. You're supposed to depend on
me for everything. And he was very clear, Mam, you
can't give me that you're not a man, because the
truth is men say things in ways that women don't
say them, because men experienced them in ways that women
(44:59):
don't experience and stem and very often the women don't
give man the space to do the man thing, you know,
because we are mothers and we are nurturers and we
do take care of everything. There are some things that
men need that their mothers simply don't have to give.
(45:23):
And once a man recognizes that it is is responsibility
to go wherever, to whomever, to do whatever it is,
to give it to himself, particularly when the situation reveals
that the thing you're requesting of your mother she simply
(45:44):
doesn't have to give. But there comes a moment when
as a woman, as a mother, as a sister, you
just gotta step up and let a man be a man.
Wasn't the prince that said let a woman be a
woman and let a man be a man. Now a
challenge comes when he doesn't know how to be a man,
and that's when there has to be a man to
(46:08):
man conversation. Nothing else is going to suffice, nothing else
is gonna fill the need. I hope this has been
helpful to someone, And if you have a question about
this or any other relationship issue, you can call me
live at seven seven five three zero seven seven seven
six eight now be sure to follow me on social
(46:30):
media for all of the calling times and until then,
stay in peace and not pieces. The R Spot is
a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, visit the I Heart
(46:52):
Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Host
Iyanla Vanzant
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