Photo: YouTube
The power of forgiveness.
By Isaac Serna-Diez — Written on Mar 16, 2023
An old clip from Iyanla Vanzant’s popular self-help series “Iyanla: Fix My Life” has recently resurfaced and is pulling on the heartstrings of hundreds of thousands of people.
The power of forgiveness can solve anything and close rifts between the most broken families. Vanzant helped one man achieve that back in October 2014 after his mother apologized for all the hurt she caused.
A mother apologized to her son for the pain she caused him growing up and for using him as 'a container' for her rage.
“I’m really really proud of you,” Williams’ mother says as she stands before him with tears in her eyes, struggling to get the words out. “I’m sorry for the damage that I did. Please forgive me.”
“I was emotionally and verbally abusive. I used you as a container for my rage — the rage against my own father. I cursed God that he gave me sons because of the rage that I had.”
The woman’s son bends over in emotional pain, damaged by the years of trauma that he had to suffer by her hands. Hearing these words out loud and the apology attached to them must have given him an overwhelming sense of validation as well as pain from reliving the trauma.
She finally apologized to her son for the pain she caused him growing up.
“You are not responsible for my rage. You are not responsible,” she continues. “You are not responsible for my rage, for my emptiness, and for 27 years out of my 64 I have been working on my own healing.”
Her son looks her in her eyes having now recovered from the pain of hearing these words, and says “I forgive you.”
Vanzant, ever-present by their sides and guiding them through the conversation says “Okay let me just take my shoes off, I can’t take it! I can’t take it [anymore],” drawing laughter from the crowd as she shows how emotional it is for her as well.
“Forgive her for what, let’s be specific,” Vanzant says, moving the conversation along. “Let’s be specific, ‘I forgive you for…’”
This is where we learn what his mother did to cause him so much pain over all those years.
“I forgive you for tearing me down,” he says. “I forgive you for telling me you wish you could leave me after daddy died. I forgive you for yelling at me every day no matter how many times I came home cleaning the house.”
He tried so hard to please her and make her happy, and it was difficult to bear the pain of knowing that it wasn’t enough to heal the hurt that she was feeling as well.
“I forgive you for every woman I hated because you hurt me,” he continues. “I forgive you for every time I hurt myself. I forgive you.”
He forgave her for not being the person he wanted her to be, for the person he needed her to be since he no longer had a father figure in his life, and perhaps the most painful thing for her to hear was what he said next.
“I needed you so bad but you were at work, you were gone, and when you got home I was sitting on that couch. I had popped 50 pills and you walked past me and you didn’t even notice.”
His mother stands there, mouth agape, trying to contain her sorrow. At this point, Vanzant stands behind her in order to prop her up and prevent her from falling over. “I’m sorry,” he says.
The video tugged at the heartstrings of hundreds who commented.
“This is the most sincere apology I’ve ever heard,” the top comment on TikTok read. Someone else wrote “That last bit about the pills. That hit her HARD.”
Someone else replied that it looked like she might not have even known about it and that’s why it might have hit so hard.
“[This] is so powerful. [This] shows strength from both of them, especially the son,” another commenter wrote. Forgiving is hard, especially when both parties are dealing with the pain of their own traumas.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, via the National Fatherhood Initiative (NFI), “18.4 million children, 1 in 4, live without a biological, step, or adoptive father in the home.”
Although the father didn’t abandon this family and passed away tragically, it still tore a hole into their lives seeing the reaction that the mother had once he was gone. The NFI reports that children who grow up without a father are at a much higher risk of being mistreated, abused, and committing suicide.
“Research shows that a father's absence affects children in numerous unfortunate ways,” they write, “while a father's presence makes a positive difference in the lives of both children and mothers.”
Despite the age of the clip, it’s important to recognize the power that forgiveness can have in repairing a broken relationship between a mother and her son.
Isaac Serna-Diez is an Assistant Editor who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics. Keep up with his rants about current events on his Twitter.