In a sneak peek episode, OWN brought us a new look at an old friend’s show.  Iyanla Fix My Life is set to debut this September 15th, but this Saturday, we were offered an inside view of what we have to look forward to from the series.  Life happens to everybody and after 11 years of her own life struggles, Iyanla Vanzant is back at Harpo Studios and with Oprah, passing on and paying forward her own lessons.  How do you learn how to fix a life?  By fixing your own first. With her own history of what could have been and wasn’t with Oprah over the years, last year in The Oprah Winfrey Show’s farewell season, Iyanla sat down and broke open for us all to see. Over the last year, we’ve seen her once again share the stage with Oprah and rebuild her life and lessons.  It may be true that we teach what we most need to learn, but not all of us are born teachers but Iyanla was born to teach.   With her straightforward and hard-hitting lessons, Iyanla takes the quickest route to the heart of the issue and breaks it open. “It’s from these pieces where you will find peace,” she tells us.

In this premier and sneak peek episode of Iyanla, Fix My Life, the journey starts with three generations of women and years of disconnect and hurt.  Iyanla says “Do the work and then, put your life together piece by piece.”  “They call it a show, I call it a workshop,” Iylana tells us. “The wounds that cut us the deepest are inflicted by the ones we love.” Tools, skills and information are laid out during the process to help us along the way but Iyanla reminds us that you have to do the work to “heal any breaks or breakdowns in your family.”

Throughout the hour, Iyanla takes us on the journey of meeting the family and outlining their struggle.  In this episode, we meet a fractured family who isn’t communicating. While there is always a bigger story of a lifetime that sixty minutes cannot cover, the daughter and granddaughter, Bernadette, who wrote into the show confesses that “it feels like we one argument away from just not talking again.”  This is not unique to this family…but this ‘workshop’ was about this family, not about its similarities with the rest of the world, although those may have been comforting at some point.  The emotional pain and missed connection were evident. The loss of what could have been versus what was played out over dinner and then, over a live studio audience in Chicago.

During the hour, the workshop takes us to the break. The breakdown. The breakthrough. The break-open.  “A breakdown can be repaired and healed if the people can do the work,” Iyanla reminds us.  By the end of the hour, the break has been laid out along the table and the process is just beginning. The show reminded me a little of the old “Oprah Winfrey Show” without the watchful eye of Oprah coming in to voice a little reasoning into the situation.  Iyanla’s approach is tough, yet connected and caring, as noted when she pushes the women to “Call a thing a thing. Say what you mean. Call it what it is.” Like tough love meets family counseling, none of the people would be there if they didn’t care for each other.  No one wants to openly “fix their life” in front of millions (or hundred thousands depending on the viewing numbers) of people, do they?  The premise is great for the show and there were lessons to capture, but it almost felt it was done at the expense of ripping off the band-aide of this family and letting it bleed as the show finished up.

The right mix for the show lies somewhere in-between a personal counseling session and group workshop.  Lessons like how families need balance and need to celebrate what they love about each other and not just telling members what is wrong with them.  Find the love and give it the attention it deserves because when you do, it can grow.  Lessons like learning to accept people for who they are today, rather than what they did in the past. Powerful lessons but I’m not sure that viewers pulled out these lessons by just watching this break unfold. At the end of the show, when the family seemed the most vulnerable and exposed, it was over with a few points to take from the workshop and a website to reference, which are noted below. No action points to help this family pick up the pieces.  No plan for moving forward.   Iyanla Fix My Life is on point with the Oprah vision of living your best life. Now they just need to find the balance for the hour so that it feels less like we are watching a personal breakdown and more like we are all experiencing a break through.

Notes from Iyanla’s Fix My Life:

1. Get off your position – Anytime you are insisting that it has to be this way, let it go.
2. Listen to what’s being said – not what you are telling yourself in your brain. Listen and don’t take it personally.
3. Accept your family member for who they are – and stop holding them hostage for what they did or didn’t do.

website: www.iyanlafixmylife.com