*During a recent episode of Nick Cannon’s podcast, Dr. Iyanla Vanzant discussed the sexual and emotional abuse she experienced in her childhood.
The life coach explained that her father’s absence of love profoundly impacted her perception of love.
“I was so unloved. I was just unloved. I felt unloved,” she told Cannon on the Feb. 26 episode of the Counsel Culture show, MadameNoire reports.
“Never in my life, I have not one memory of my father kissing me, hugging me or telling me he loved me,” she added, noting that she was age 30 when her father committed suicide.
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According to Iyanla, she was sexually abused by an uncle who was “a functional alcoholic.”
“The uncle who raised me, who I lived under his roof, who was a functional alcoholic, who probably said 10 words to me in his entire life, ‘You know I love you’ being one of them,” Vanzant continued.
“So, when he raped me, I thought that was a demonstration of his love,” Iyanla told Cannon. “So, I was on the other end of being promiscuous, A. wanting to feel loved. And, number two, because I was shuttled around to so many…my job was to make people happy. To please people.”
Iyanla said her father “never kissed me, never told me he loved me.” So she ultimately married “the first thing hobbling along on the crutch.”
Watch the conversation with Cannon above to hear Iyanla explain her turning point after feeling “filthy” and “broken.”
READ MORE: Jada Pinkett Smith Explores Her ’Healing Journey’ with Iyanla Vanzant | Watch
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