Iyanla dives deep into sibling and parental relationships in an episode with a single caller who is having a breakdown with her “Guardian.” The caller, a 29-year-old woman was raised by her older sister after their mother died at a young age. Now, the caller resents her sister for the way she was raised – with physical and emotional abuse that led to a combative adult relationship. Iyanla’s caller isn’t sure if she has a mother/daughter relationship, a sister relationship, or no relationship at all.
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Executive Producers: Sandie Bailey, Alex Alcheh, Lauren Hohman, Tyler Klang & Gabrielle Collins
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Associate Producer: Akiya McKnight
I Ami Yamla. I've been very open about the fact that I was not always good at making my relationships work. I have been divorced three times, twice from the same person. In other words, I have seen a lot and failed a lot in my relationships. So I am here to share with you what I learned along the way, because I did take copious notes. Welcome to the Our Spot, a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. One of the things that I find so interesting in relationships and the whole drama of the relationships that we have in our lives, is that we can get so focused on what we don't have, what didn't happen, what went wrong, until we totally miss the opportunities and the possibilities and the blessings that do exist. And when we're in relationships, because we're externally referenced most of the time, we're looking outside of ourselves. We only see the person based on our needs and not based on their needs. And nothing will turn a relationship on its head quicker than you looking at what that other person isn't doing, doesn't have, didn't do. We have to be more present focused in a relationship and particularly relationships with our parents, caregivers, guardians. We look at what they didn't give us, what they should have given us, and not the sacrifice they made to give us whatever it was. I always talk about the mother who gave her children trash. It was trash. I'm talking stinky trash out the garbage can. Now here's what the children don't always consider, and that is that she got up at three o'clock in the morning while they were sleeping, and she walked two and a half miles up to the good part of town, the good neighborhood, and she dug through the trash cans of the condos and the high rises to find the best trash she could find, because she knew that all she had to give her children was trash, but she made it her responsibility to get them the best trash that she could find. And then she walked back two and a half hours with that trash and told careful not to drop a piece of it. That's all she had to give. And when she gave it to the children without them the five hours that she walked back and forth and how many trash can she had to dig through, they focus on the fact, Oh, Damn, my mama gave me trash and not what she had to go through together. Sometimes all people have to give us it's trash, but we never consider the effort they made to make sure it was the best trash they could find. We stay mad because all they gave us was trash. Relationships they are so difficult and challenging. And my guest today she's got a real challenging one, but there is a solution. Listen up, good morning, Welcome to the our spot and what is your relationship issue, challenge, question dilemma This morning, I have a tough thing with my sister slash guardian. I'm trying to figure out how to put my foot down without severing the family relationship because she has an amazing relationship with my daughter, but she's also undermining my authorities, belittering me. The whole entire our relationship is extremely toxic. So I'm trying to figure out what to do because talking to her isn't working. And every time I try to even say anything, it's like I try to have a big voice, but then she makes me have a little voice again. So I'm just trying to figure out what can I do? Okay, let me. See if I got this, you have a sister, I'm assuming she's an older sister. What does that mean she's your guardian? When my mom passed when I was eight, she took over guardian ships of me and my brothers. Um. But now I'm twenty nine, I'm a full adult, and you know, I've went through mental abuse with her, physical abuse, and just all kinds of crazy stuff. So I'm just like, how do I fix this? Well? Why do you still call her your guardian? Why do you still call her your guardian? If you're a grown woman, Why do you call her that? Um? Because it's it's hard for me to say my mom, I don't, I don't, I don't know. She keeps throwing out and like I said, this extreme toxic situation, and it's it's it's confusing because one minute you want to be my sister, next minute you're trying to be my mom. So I don't know which one is she trying to be. I don't know. It's confusing, it's toxic and effecting my relationship with my daughter. It's affecting a relationship of you know, my mental helps and everything. And I just don't know what to do at this point, I really want to encourage you to stop saying you don't know what to do. You do know what to do now, whether or not you have the courage to do it, that may be what we need to work through. Do you and your sister live together? Yes? Why do you live with her? I ran into financial issues about a month ago and I had to move back in with her, and I'm trying to look for my own place again, but until then, I am living with her. Okay, So you're in a kind of dependent situation where you want to be seen as independent. Yeah, okay, well that's a problem. So part of the problem is you have to act like an adult if you want to be treated like an adult. That's sister. She You no longer need her to be your guardian, but you're still holding her in your mind as your guardian, but you want her to act as though she's your sister. She has a relationship with you where she was the mother figure or in the mother role, and the mother's job is to nurture, nourish, educate, and be that soft place for you to fall. So she's been that. She wasn't that it was the exact opposite any but that's the role she had. How she filled the role may have been dysfunctional, but the role that she had in your life, and in the role that she had in the eyes of the law or the world, was that she was to take care of you, provide for you, nourish you, nurture you. That's the role she had. How she did it is different. I mean, that's a completely different issue. Understand. So the way she raised you was based on what she thought she had to do. And now, but you called her your guardian. If you no longer want her to be your guardian, then it's time for you to learn how to take care of yourself. And sure, we all have setback some problems. See for me, I didn't have a mother or father. When I fell on my face, I was just on my face, licking mud. I didn't have nowhere to go. Friends took me in. So you say you had some financial difficulties, Well, you know what do adults do when they have financial difficulties. They experienced consequences. They don't go running home. No, that was honestly, that wasn't my first choice. But you know, due to the fact that I do have her six year old daughter, it was like I didn't have a secure place to live. So that's not your sister's problem, that's your problem. And the fact that at twenty nine, your life is set up so that you only you know my mother, my father actually used to say to me, you know, it's a poor rat that only got one hole. Rat got to have a lot of holes to run to. You set your life up so that you only have one place to go. So now that you're there, it's not permanent. It's not going to be permanent. So you've got to focus on getting up out of there as quickly as you can to avoid the toxicity, and then perhaps when you're out of there, you can work on healing your relationship with your sister. You can do it while you're there, but not as long as you continue to hold her in your mind as your guardian. How old is she he is in I think her late forties, early like or fifties. I'm not too quite sure because she keep telling us a different age, so I don't know. And what is the conversation that you have had with her about wanting to be seen and treated as an adult? Have you ever had that conversation with her? Yes, I had that conversation plenty of times, but it's like talking to a brick wall. And then it goes into the belittling thing. She will bring up things that I've done in high school and I'm like, normal teenagers do these kinds of things, and it turns into a big old argument. Then eventually, you know, we both come down because you know, both tensions are high. And then I'm just like, I'm literally trying to do everything in my willpower to obtain my career because I'm trying to be an EMT or a firefighter. I've been trying to do that. And it's just like, listen, i don't need you to talk down on me. I'm an adult. And then she always, you know, comes with kinda like the condescending and I'm like, all I'm asking is just to support you. Don't have to agree with what I'm doing or how I want to live my life, just support me. And that just turns into a whole nother thing, and you know, unfolds more and more and more stuff, and I'm just like, well, we're just not getting anywhere because she seeks, oh if it's not her way in her ideal situation that everything is a pipe dream, and it's stupid and it's the wrong decision, just like a typical mother. Just like a typical mother, every mother has dreams for their children, and if the children don't follow the mother's dream, the mother has a problem. Ask me how I know, Go ahead, ask me how I know? Go ahead, None of your business, just like a typical mother. And do you know where that comes from? Because your baby's only six. So round about the time when she gets thirteen and starts what my grandmother used to say, smelling herself and starts to want to break break free of your tyranny over her life. That's gonna happen around thirteen. Okay, you're gonna see the things that she's doing and you're just gonna want to bang your head up against the wall because they're gonna look wrong and stupid because you have a real idea of what has to what she has to do to be successful. And you know mothers are neurotic. So this is your sister who lost her mother, who lost her mother and ended up responsible for two children in the midst of her grief. That's what happened to her at that time too. We'll talk more about it when we come back. Welcome back to the our spot. My guests and I are talking about what happens when a person in your life plays a dual role and we hold them responsible for that role without even considering how difficult or challenging it was for them to be two things at the same time. Let's get back to the conversation. Probably, I don't know what her relationship was like with your mom, but it must have been good in order for her to take on her mother's two children, because she didn't have to do that. You could have gone into foster home. I wonder how much of her obsession with you it's about not wanting to fail her mother and wanting to prove to her mother that she did a good job with you. And if you fail, she's going to be disappointing her mother. I wonder. I mean that can be too. I mean, because it was points of time growing up. You know, teenagers in touch school, you know, do other things and stuff like that normal teenager behavior. But when I was doing it, I got kicked out of the house, which led me into other things. But she couldn't fail her mom. And you know, a twenty year old with four kids, that's a lot How grateful are you that she took you in? How grateful I mean, I'm grateful, it's just good aship. I'm not grateful of that relationship. Well, you can't heal the relationship as an adult woman with another adult woman as long as you're dependent upon her for something so essential in your life. You and her have to create a new normal. She's not your guardian anymore. She is your bigger sister, and but you have to conduct yourself in such a way that she can respect who you've become. And even though for her it'll be whew, you know I didn't fail my mom, for you, it'll be this is who I am. And I want to be in relationship with you as another woman, not with you as my guardian or my mother. You may not be able to do that right now. But I heard you say that she's condescending or she'll talk down to you. Have you ever said something as simple to her as Do you have any idea how much it hurts me to hear you talk to me like that? Yes, I tried, he said, so white. It's called tough love, and that's the only way I know how to do it. And I don't care if you rule me as a bitch or and then she starts going more into now this aggressive spin. Well you know, well, for me, what I would say to that is, She'll hope nobody, particularly God ever treats you the way you're treating me right now, because I would not want that for you. Yes, but I want to go back to this. This is not an excuse at all. It's really just a consideration that at twenty she lost her mother, when she had two children, that she probably wanted her mom to be there for her, be there with her, help her raise them, you know, give her advice. She didn't learn how to be a mom because my mom was gone, and then in the midst of losing her mom and grieving that she has four kids, she took on her siblings. I mean, if we could just hang out there for a moment and send her some level of compassion. My birth mother died when I was two. Nobody ever told me that, But I grew up between my stepmother and my grandmother. But my performative years from two to five, I was with my grandmother, and then all throughout the rest of my life, my grandmother was like the primary female caregiverer. My grandmother was meaner than a wet cat. She was so mean to when she came in the room, the goldfish stopped swimming. They didn't want they didn't want her to see that move because she would have something to say about the way they were swimming. That's how mean my grandmother was, and it scared me. It scared me, and I hated her until I was about maybe forty years old, when I recognized that in her mid thirties, or maybe she was forty, she might have been early forties, her son's concubine died because my mother was the other woman. She wasn't my father's wife. My father had a wife, and she ended up with two children to raise. And as the grandma. You know, grandmothers do what the parents can't do. That's part of what the grandparents do. They come in, they support, they step in, they help when the parents can't. So she did that. She took me and my brother on. She was part Native American, part Black. She was a domestic worker. She scrub floors and toilets and cooked for people for a living. She worked from five o'clock in the morning til nine ten o'clock at night, and all of a sudden, she's got a two year old and a five year old. And she did that for the next I don't know how many years, And I was forty when I realized that she was bitter and resentful that her life had been placed on whole to raise her son's two children. It didn't have anything to do with me. It had to do with her bitterness and resentment that this had happened in her life, her anger towards my father for not having his life together, that she ended up with these two kids. It didn't have anything to do with me. So I'm wondering if some of the ways your sister behaved didn't have anything to do with you, but had to do with her own grief and resentment or bitterness or anger or frustration that her mom died and left her with these two kids. Hell, where is they father? Why can't they Daddy take up? Why got to have them? At twenty she saddled with four kids. Do you have any compassion for her? Because that's what I had to get from my grandmother in order to heal. I had to stop seeing her as bitter and mean, and see her as tired, and see her as sad, and see her as disappointed and see her as broken. Can you see any of that for your sister? I do. Yeah, Now I get it, I really do get it. It's just it's it's unfortunate that that that birness and the angriness was just lashed out onto me because it's it's like what it's it's not an excuse like as you said, but it's just like I don't understand, like the physical when you know the physical abuse of it. I understand she was she was still hurt in and it's very frustrating. She was grieving and everything like that. But at the same time, you didn't have to constantly put your hands on me like I was a stranger in the streets. It didn't see. You can't have it both ways. You can't have it both ways. You can't you either have I understand, recognize and hold it with compassion and not be angry at her, or just continue to be angry at her and say what it shouldn't have been. You can't have it both ways. When I was five, I didn't go to go to kindergarten. My grandmother needed me to be disciplined and obedient and total line because she had to get up and get to work and make that money to feed me and my brother. And I was not disciplined, obedient, nor I total line and she beat the Holy living But Jesus oide of me. When I was five, I didn't go to kindergarten because my grandmother beat me. And she's old school with a ironing chord, and welts and scars were on my back that she didn't attend to because she was going to work. And when my stepmother came to take me school shopping, she pulled my undershirt off and pulled all the skin off my back so I couldn't go to kindergarten. I was in hospital. Now I can be upset about that I didn't go to kindergarten my grandmother beat the skin off my back, or I can say it really I understand it wasn't personal. She needed me to be disciplined and I wasn't. She needed me to be ruthlessly obedient to everything she said, and I wasn't. She needed me to follow instructions implicitly, and I didn't. I did the normal things that a three year old, five year old, ten year old kid did, just like you said, cut in school and blah blah blah blah blah. I wasn't with her then, but at five, you know, she told me, don't go in the room and touch the stuff. I went in the room and touch this up. She said, don't play with the knickknacks. I played with the knickknacks. Yeah, I was a problem. I was a problem. I get it now that for her to leave two children in the house in order for her to travel two and a half hours to get to work, to scrub floors, clean toilets, and cook food for white folks so that we could eat. She needed me to follow her rules and I didn't. And when I didn't, she became extremely frustrated, and she was gonna beat obedience into me, and she was gonna beat discipline into me, and she was gonna beat Do you understand it won't even about me. It was about what she needed. I didn't know that as a child, but as an adult I had to either let that scar me or say I get it and I forgive you. Like you said, it's about understanding his forgiveness. I'm not I'm not angry. I'm just hurt. It's just a lot of pain and a lot of herbs that we're not talking about it. It's like, all right, spepid, I'm a drug. That's it. I don't want to hear nothing else about it. But I'm like, we've got to talk about these things because it was other things that happened to me, you know, in my young adulthood, which I can't I can't share with her because it's it's a lot. It's just like, well, is she gonna be condescending, is she gonna feel compassion? Anything? Like? Is she gonna recognize you know, anything? So I just keep a lot of pain and hurt to myself. Well, that's what therapists are for. Do you love your sister, you said? Do I love her? Yeah? Do you love her yes? Do you want the best for her? Yeah? In spite of everything that's happened. Okay, So I want you to close your eyes, just for a moment, close your eyes, and I want you to see her. And I want you to see her bandaged from head to toe, everything, her head, her face like a mummy. The only thing that's out is her eyes and her mouth, her nose so she can breathe see her, I mean, her hands are bandaged, her legs, her stomach, her face, everything she's bandaged in those white bandages from head to toe. Can you see that? Yeah? And can you see or imagine that everything under that bandage is raw? It's raw flesh. How would you treat her? How would you treat her knowing that she's raw under those bandages and the only thing out is her eyes, her nose, in her mouth? How would you treat her? Her? Passion? Love? Yeah, gentleness? Yeah, yeah, So even though she raised you, she's bandaged from head to toe, and even though you think, because she as in the mother role, she should have been good to you, you get an opportunity to treat her the way she didn't treat you, Kindly, gently, with compassion, hearing everything she says as a reflection of her pain that has nothing to do with you. What if you're really the one who has to raise her, even though she raised you? What if? And I know the little girl inside of you doesn't want to do that, but I need the grown woman right now, the twenty nine year old, to make another choice. Forget the role, forget that she was older and the guardian and that you were younger and feel victimized. Switch roles. Treat her the way she didn't treat you and get your stuff together, to get the heck about that house as quickly as you can. She's wounded, she's broken, and she doesn't have the capacity. She's not capable. She really isn't, because if she was, she would do it. She's not capable of treating you any differently than she already has. Yeah, tell me what you're hearing, Tell me what's going on. I'm just thinking about, you know, trying to get into therapies with her, not with her, not with her for you leave her alone. She's bandaged. She can't go to therapy with bandages from her head to her feet. She can't even sit in the therapist's chair. She can't do it right now. And it doesn't mean that the relationship can't be healed and change. But the work is on you. Sure, the work is on you, because obviously she ain't having no problem you are. Yeah, she thinks it's okay you don't. So what do we do now? We'll talk about that right after this break. Welcome back, I Amy, I'm ling. This is the our spot. So tell me, in your current relationship with your sister, what is something you can do differently I mean, I could try not to take things as as personal. Well, either you're gonna take them as personal or you're not. There is no try, There is only do or don't do. So, either you're gonna do it or you're not gonna do it. I'm not gonna take Well, let's not go so big first, Let's do something real small. Stop seeing her, calling her, holding her as your guardian. That don't have nothing. You don't need her to do that, that's in your mind, in your heart. This is not my guardian. This is a wounded woman. This is my sister, and she's a wounded woman. She is not my guardian. You could do that. Yeah, you don't expect her to be nice to you, or listen to you, or care about your feelings because she's wounded from head to toe. She's just trying to deal with her own pain. Can you see that? Yes, So that's one thing you can do that you don't need her permission or insight to do it. And I hear you saying you want to heal with her, and I hear you saying there's things you want to say to her that you can't. Don't expect her to do it. She's bandaged, she's wounded. Okay, what's going on? You're not thinking, You're not speaking, what are you thinking? I'm just I was just thinking, like maybe it's time that I should, you know, stop putting so much on just this one sister and oh you know how she treated me and stuff like that, and actually just go into therapy and try to work on my other relationships with family members because right now I'm only a so she like her as my number one, Like you said, it's a guardian. I need to stop putting her at that plateau. That might be helpful. And maybe you, instead of focusing on these family relationships that come from brokenness and hurt, maybe you just need to focus on being an EMT. How about that? Is that what you said you want to do become empty? So what do you need to do to make that happen? Um, well, it's I have to put an application go to the fire academy. What's the conversation that I had with my sister last night was? And I've had this conversation with her for two months now. I'm like, well, I need someone to, you know, look out for my daughters because the schedule that they are asking, it's Monday through Friday six am to five pm. As an adult woman with a few supportive people in your life, how would you handle that? How would you handle that? That's your business. You've got to get that handle. And she's bandaged from head to toe. So if she can't do that, what's your other options? Friends? In bigcare, I can't really afford the head right now. So I mean, she's she's in school, but she gets out of school at two fifteen. So from two fifteen until five five thirty, it's like I'm stuck in the same situation as I was before New Jersey where I went to be in T school four times and had to enroll every single time. Why because I didn't have the support when it came to my daughter. So what is your prayer that I find support and be able to accomplish the career that I I want? Because honestly, these these little dead end jobs isn't isn't enough, It's not enough. I need more? Well, you want more, and that you have a right. But if your mind is made up that you don't have support, that your sister should be doing it and she's not, that you don't have anybody there for you, There may be possibilities and opportunities that are available that you don't even see. So that's why I'm asking you, what's your Your prayer doesn't have to be that I find. It could be God's source, creator who whatever it is for you, send me what I need to make this dream my reality. Send me the proper person in the proper way. I know it's here. It has to be here because God never gives you a vision without giving you the provision. If you have a vision of being an EMT, if you've gone to school four times, then the provision you need is there. But if you're thinking it has to come from your sister or your family, you may not even see other possibilities. So let your prayer be that everything you need to complete or manifest this dream, that it comes forward, that it shows up easily, effortlessly. It doesn't have to be hard. It doesn't. You're making it harder than it needs to be. Did you finish EMT school? No, what do you have to do to finish? I literally just have to go back for one semester and test to tests and that's it. All right, Well that'll happen. Take it off, your sister, take it off of her. Open yourself to greater possibilities. There may be a retired old school teacher that takes in children on a twenty four hours basis. I mean, you don't know. They could be right in your backyard. But you've got to be open and stop looking at what happened and what you don't have. What's possible for tomorrow is where we got to focus. She's bandaged from head to toe. She cannot give you what you need. Doesn't mean you can't get it from other places and other people. And as your life balances out and you become more secure in yourself, you can heal those other relationships too. I'm gonna give you a prescription, all right. You want to write this down or will you remember it? Okay? I remember it all right? Every single day for the next twenty one days, every day that your eyes open up. I don't care where you are. I want you to make ten statements of gratitude whoever you pray to God, Jesus, Buddha Allah, I don't know you know the universe divide mother, it doesn't matter. Thank you for the perfect childcare situation for my daughter so that I can complete EMT school. Thank you for the perfect opportunity to earn the money that I need to find the place to live. Thank you for my health. Thank you for my strength. Thank you for this roof over my head. Thank you. Ten statements every day. It could be the same statements, different statements. It could be for stuff you have and for stuff that you want. Ten statements of gratitude every single morning that your eyes open. You can speak it out loud, you can write it down. Thank you, Thank you. Thank you for the babysitter, for the EMT school taking you back, for the money you need to go to EMT school, for the passing the em two school tests, for your first jobs on an ambulance. I don't know whatever, But instead of turning it into complaints of what you don't have, your prescription is to give thanks for it right now, calling it in give thanks right now. Every day, for twenty one days, you give thanks, and you watch how stuff starts showing up for you. I could do that. Thank you for my sister and her healing. Thank you that the relationship between me and my sister is healed. Thank you for my new two bedroom apartment overlooking the forests in the trees or whatever you want, I don't know, start affirming and calling in what you desire instead of complaining about what you have and what you don't have, and leave your sister alone. Thank you? And you know you have to stop seeing how as your guardian and expecting things from her that she may not be able to give you. Stop seeing her as that calling her that holding her is that? Stop that see her as your sister, as a broken, wounded woman that needs your kindness, your gentleness, your love, and your compassion, even if she doesn't give it to you. She needs that. Yeah, and you do you know now that even though she was responsible for your growing up, that maybe it's your job to raise her and give her what she didn't or couldn't give you. Do you know that? And do you know you are going to find everything that you need and you are going to be an emt even if your sister doesn't believe it. Do you know that? Yeah? Do you know you've got the power to make your dreams come true? Do you know that? Yeah? Okay, so you're in much better shape than when you're called you think. Yeah, don't try to do everything at once. Let's focus on where we are right now, making that better, and then we'll move on. You can move on to other things, making the relationships with the other, healing your relationship. Let's get you through school and on your first ambulance as an EMT. Let's do that. Let's focus on that, and these ten statements will get you there. I promise you you're right. Like my brother said, you won't have anything, but Tom, that's right. You're twenty nine. I got braws older than you. Check back in with me and let me know how you're doing. Okay, all right, I can do that, all right, my love, thank you, Okay, bye bye. My guest today brings up a very very interesting topic and one that I'm sure many of us have encountered at some point to another, and that is the person in charge of raising us, guiding us. Our primary caregiver was anything but nice to us, and we want to hold them responsible for the hurt, the harm, the danger that they did, even if they did the best they could. It's hard for us to see that. I have so much compassion for my guests today, and I truly understand exactly where she's coming from, because when what you receive from your primary caregiver is trashed, you really don't want to consider the effort that they put in to give it to you. But sometimes people simply don't have the capacity. They don't have the capacity to give us anything more than they've given us an Our job, for our healing, it's not to ruminate over what we didn't get or how we got what we did get. Our job is to dig within deep enough to be able to say thank you, even for the trash, thank you for what I got, even though I don't like how I got it. Thank you because without that person and that trash, who knows where you'd be today. 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 sixty eight. Now be sure to follow me on social 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 iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.