Iyanla Vanzant spoke with Hoda Kotb on her “Making Space With Hoda Kotb” podcast about the death of her daughter Gemmia and how it has affected her life.
Vanzant’s daughter succumbed to a rare form of colon cancer in 2003. The death of a child is always devastating for a parent to experience, but the spiritual life coach has been able to extract valuable life lessons from the tragedy.
Kotb brought up the old saying at the beginning of the podcast, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.”
Vanzant, who recently ended a 10-season run on OWN’s Iyanla Fix My Life, added another salient point.
“When the student’s really ready, the teacher disappears,” she said.
Gemmia’s cancer diagnosis was a shock to the system. Vanzant had just experienced the cancelation of her daytime talk show Iyanla in 2002. Around that time, her marriage was also ending, and she was in a place of financial strain as her daughter’s only caretaker.
Vanzant told Kotb that her daughter was the love of her life. Although she has another daughter and son, she said that she recognized that Gemmia loved her first. She even mused that they may have been soulmates in a previous lifetime.
But, her daughter’s death changed her for the better.
“God must’ve really, really trusted me to give me a soul to bring into life and to trust me with the courage to send her out,” Vanzant said.
As she reflected on her life and her daughter’s life, she profoundly declared that her daughter did everything in 31 years that she was supposed to do, a lesson that she did not understand at the time of her death but now understands completely.
Vanzant shared how many of the traumatic events in her life have helped her better navigate that process of not only experiencing her daughter’s illness and death but helping others heal.
The grand takeaway from the charismatic teacher’s interview was the power to let go and the willingness to trust the process.
