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Who I am is not who I used to be. But who I am is all of who I used to be. It took a while, but that meditative insight, which I had received months ago, finally made sense. I understood that even when we change, our history does not. What you have learned through your experiences in life will influence, affect, and motivate everything you do. More important, if you are not careful and vigilant, the crap in your history will seep through and soil your present-day reality. I had been keeping a close watch on Rhonda, but somehow, here she was. Seeping through. Acting up. Rhonda had placed me in a situation that was familiar to her, but contradictory and repugnant to the new me. Here was a little more crap that I needed to clean up so that I would be able to celebrate what was about to happen in my life.

When I was at a very low point in my life, God sent an angel to watch over me. The low point resulted partly from Iyanla’s stuff and partly from Rhonda’s stuff. Back then, I had reached a point where, in seven days or less, I would be evicted from my home. I had no place to go. I had no money and none coming in the foreseeable future. My telephone had been disconnected. I had no male friend with whom to share my troubles. It was seventeen degrees outside, and I was standing in front of the 7-Eleven, using a pay telephone to transact business. It now seems absolutely amazing to me that when you really need help, the ego, your pride, will not allow you to ask for it. My career as a writer and speaker was just budding. I didn’t want anyone to know the truth about my situation. (Rhonda’s crap.) I had no agent, and the contract I had received that morning from a small independent publisher represented instant money. It was well below the money I had anticipated receiving for my book, but it was money nonetheless. God knows I needed it, but something about the contract just didn’t feel right. (Iyanla’s intuition.) I had been there before. Desperate for money. Making decisions in fear. Being evicted. And horny as all get out.

Shivering in my cheap—excuse me, economical—coat, I rested my head against the ice-cold telephone and uttered my favorite prayer: “HELP!” It always works for me. The prayer hadn’t frozen in the cold air before the thought popped into my mind: Call your editor, Darlene. Obediently, I picked up the telephone and dialed. As if she knew why I was calling, Darlene told me about a manager she had lunched with the day before. “Give me her number,” I said. I don’t even remember saying good-bye or hanging up the phone. Two other people had mentioned the very same person to me under much less stressful conditions. I made the call. Karen, the manager I thought could fix my life and save me, greeted me as if she had known me all of my life.

It seems that people had been talking to her about me, too. With the preliminaries out of the way, I blurted out my story. The contract. The publisher. The back-and-forth negotiations. My verbal agreement with the publisher. My dream, my goal. The nature of the book. I acknowledged that, although I was a lawyer, I had practiced criminal law and knew little about contracts. I didn’t have a clue, but I knew something didn’t feel right about the deal. It takes a very focused person to absorb your life story in 3.3 minutes, then respond in a way that makes sense. Instinctively knowing that I had traumatized myself sufficiently and that I was now preparing to cry, Karen responded, “I’ll take care of it.” Oh my God! I’m not going to be living in the park with the squirrels! The frozen squirrels! At least they have fur; all’s I’ve got is K-Mart on sale!

Although Iyanla had learned to expect a miracle and trust the process, Rhonda was into creating drama, panic, and the need to be rescued. Rhonda won that round. But within two weeks, the rent was paid, the telephone was on, I had a lucrative deal with a major publisher, and the angel named Karen was an integral part of my life.

Karen and I talked almost every day,