*Iyanla Vanzant is standing by her decision to skip her daughter’s funeral, saying she had to put her own well-being first.
The spiritual life coach revisited that decision on BET’s “The Jason Lee Show.” Host Jason Lee opened the conversation by sharing his own decision to skip his father’s funeral after years of estrangement.
“My first responsibility is to take care of me,” Vanzant told Lee, Complex reports. “I didn’t feel that it would be safe for me, that it would be respectful for her, for me to go.”
She stressed that staying away did not mean she failed to honor her daughter. Instead, she chose to grieve privately, on her own terms.
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“I sat home, and I prayed. I did ceremony for her,” she said. “I lifted her and elevated her soul and her spirit.”
Vanzant and Lee agreed that attending a funeral should not be an obligation when doing so conflicts with personal boundaries. She also challenged the idea that funeral services are meant for those who have died.
“Funerals are not for the dead. Funerals are for the living,” she said.
Vanzant previously discussed her absence from the 2023 funeral of her youngest daughter, Nisa, during a January appearance on “The Breakfast Club.” As theGrio reported, she said she stayed away to avoid a possible confrontation with her grandson, who “was just out of his mind” at the time. Their relationship had become strained, and she feared how he might react if he saw her at the service.
“I know it was grief,” she said. “But I wasn’t gonna put myself in jeopardy. I wasn’t gonna give him the opportunity to disrespect his mother by disrespecting her mother. And I didn’t know what he might do… but I was a trigger for him. I knew I was a trigger for him, and I had to tell the truth about that.”
Rather than attend the funeral, Vanzant visited her daughter the day before the service.
“I had my own thing with her,” she said. “She was still gonna be dead the next day. I didn’t have to be there.”
Vanzant said she found peace with her decision because she knew it came from a place of love.
“Once I made the decision, because I made it from a place of love and care, I was okay with it,” she explained.
Watch Vanzant’s conversation with Jason Lee below.
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