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By Root 780 0

I love myself when I didn’t know anything about me? I knew what I had been told. I knew what others had said to me, about me, but I honestly did not know myself. I felt so wounded and battered. I felt tired. No. Exhausted. I wanted to love myself, and I knew in order to do that, I would have to understand myself. I remembered the questions Balé had given me. I ran to my purse and retrieved my notes. Sitting on the edge of my bed, I tried to answer the questions on the list. I was surprised how difficult it was to answer some of the questions, but I worked until long after the sun came up to find a suitable answer to each one of them.

What is your favorite color?

Orange.

What is your favorite food?

Chicken.

What is your favorite song?

“Lean on Me.”

What is your most valued possession?

My Bible.

What is your greatest strength?

Sense of humor.

What is your greatest weakness?

I usually jump to conclusions, expecting the worst.

What is your best skill?

Oral communication.

What was your greatest mistake?

Mistaking sexual attraction for love.

What is your greatest fear?

People will not like me and will talk about me.

What is your greatest accomplishment?

Telling Aunt Nadine about Uncle Leroy.

What is the one task that you are least fond of doing?

Paying bills and handling money.

If your life ended today, what is the one thing everyone who knows you would say about you?

She had a great sense of humor.

What would you want them to say?

She was a person of good character.

Why wouldn’t or couldn’t they say what you would want them to say?

Because they don’t know Iyanla. They only know Rhonda.

One day, several weeks later, I returned to my office after a brutal morning in court and visiting clients at three different prisons. The office was dark. I flipped the light switch, but the lights did not come on. I tried again. Nothing. I walked to the office next door and asked a colleague if her lights were working. “I think so,” she said. She got up from her desk, where she had been working by the light of her desk lamp, and flipped the light switch. Her lights came right on. I told her I couldn’t get my lights to come on. She returned with me to my office and flipped the switch on and off—twice. The office was still dark. She did it one more time.

“You’d better get your eyes checked. These lights are on. They work fine.”

I stood watching her as she left my office. When I sat down in my chair, trying to figure out what was happening, I heard a voice. It was so clear, I turned to see who was standing behind me. Leave this place. Leave now and never come back.

Gemmia met me at the office late that afternoon so that we could go shopping. When I left, the framed pictures of my children were on the desk, my law degree was hanging on the wall, and I had tea bags and honey in the bottom drawer. I never set foot in that office again.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

What’s the Lesson When You Don’t Love Yourself First?

It is through hearing—and obeying—the demand to make a life adjustment that the ability to face oneself grows. In fact, many abilities grow along with self-trust … As each correction is made, the bond between self and Self grows stronger, thus giving more power to the voice of Self, more clarity and purpose to the individual life.

Marsha Sinetar, in Ordinary People as Monks and Mystics

I HAD BEEN UNEMPLOYED four months before someone told me that I could collect money because I wasn’t working. My employer paid me for two months while I was trying to make up my mind about what I was going to do. I knew I would have to take the bar exam again, but I also knew that I did not want to practice law. By the time I got to the unemployment office to file for benefits, things were pretty tight, but they were also pretty exciting. I had finished reading all of the books Balé had given me, and probably fifty others. I stopped seeing Adeyemi, and he moved to Atlanta—without his wife. Gemmia had gone off to college. Nisa was making it through high school, and Damon was still chasing his wife around the globe.

I was