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I started my first weekly ministry, the Transformation Station, which met every Sunday morning in the new house. I started with ten clients and students. Two years later, there was a line to get in. I had learned to combine the universal principles I was learning through Unity with the cultural principles I had learned in Yoruba. Going back to my Bible, and reading the other books Balé had given me, I had somehow found and could articulate the common thread: God is. God exists everywhere, all the time, in everything. Eric Butterworth, a Unity teacher, wrote, “We are an eachness in the Allness of God.” I had learned, understood, and believed that God existed in me. The essence and energy of God are expressed as me. By that time, I had also been introduced to and studied A Course in Miracles. The Course teaches about the power of love, also about the presence of the ego, which keeps us separate from and unable to recognize God’s love in each other. It was the teachings of Unity, The Course, and a metaphysical understanding of the teachings of the Bible that helped me to build Iyanla’s character. What I had not yet done was learn how to love myself. I knew what the books said, but I was still having trouble putting it into practice. I needed a man to help me do that.

He wasn’t married. He was living with someone. He was gorgeous. He was aloof. He would say one thing and do another. Before long, I found myself doing with him what I had done in the past. I was trying to make him change his mind. I was sleeping with a man who was not giving me all that I wanted and needed. And I was using a relationship as the barometer by which I measured my success. When we were on, I was on. When he didn’t call or come over, I felt like everything was falling apart. He brought up all of my worth issues, my abandonment issues, and he helped me to see that I was still looking for love “out there.” Once I realized what I was doing, I didn’t have the strength or courage to stop. I kept seeing him for more than a year before I remembered the list. What do you want? I want a man who is willing to be seen with me in public. What is your greatest fear? That I will never find a man to love me. What is your greatest weakness? Needing someone to love me. Why? Because I don’t love myself. Why? Because I’m not good enough. Why? Because that is what I have been told.

Each time I worked with the list, new questions and deeper insights emerged. I never said a word to my male friend. I just stopped calling. So did he. When he did call, months later, I was well on my way to learning “I am the love I seek.”

While working with the women in the program, I had developed a small pamphlet for them. It was a workbook, something they could hold onto when they left the program. Most of it came from the journals I had kept over the years. It revealed the lessons I had learned through many painful experiences. It was an analysis of the things I had done to create the chaos and drama I had experienced in my life. With each new class that entered, I added more to the book. I soon had a forty-page book that I wanted to get published. A friend introduced me to someone in the publishing field who would help me self-publish the book. Self-publishing takes money. I had none. The only thing I had was a commitment to get the book published.

A small business owner who had heard about my ministry and my work said that he would be willing to finance the book. A member of the ministry designed the cover. It took about six weeks. The day the books were delivered to my house, I cried. Tapping the Power Within: A Path to Self-Empowerment for Black Women was my first baby. It was a beautiful baby that I sold out of shopping bags to bookstores throughout the city. Gemmia and I made a list of bookstores around the country. When the telephone was working, we solicited orders. Soon I was selling between one hundred and two hundred books a week to stores as far away as Dallas. As the news about the book spread, people began calling me.