 IYANLA VANZANT: Now how did you sweet, ol' round-faced grandmama--? 
 Today you’re a grandma. You weren’t a grandma back then.
 MATILDA: I was forty-five years old.
 Forty-five years old…
 Mm-hmm.
 Yes.
 …when you got arrested.
 Yes.
 How many children?
 Ten.
 Ten children?
 Yes.
 Forty-five years old.
 Forty-five years old.
 And you got sentenced to what?
 Three hundred and sixty months…
 Which is?
 …equals thirty years.
 Stop the madness. Why?
 Drugs.
 What about drugs?
 Drugs that my sons was sellin’ to feed their 
 little sisters and brothers, clothe ‘em to send ‘em to school.
 Your sons…
 Yep.
 …were selling drugs…
 Yep.
 …to feed your children?
 To help me feed my children.
 Why?
 I was strugglin’. I was workin’. I was tryin’ to go to school. 
 I was strugglin’. My sons—
 You mean like hundreds of thousands of other black women on the planet?
 Exactly.
 So how did you get to sellin’ drugs?
 I didn’t sell drugs. My sons then decided to sell drugs.
 Hmm.
 Because they didn’t want to see their mother strugglin’.
 They would bring you money?
 Yes. They’d give me money.
 And where did you think they were gettin’ the money from?
 Truthfully? I knew I was takin’ drug money.
 Really?
 Yes.
 From your children?
 Yes.
 Talk to me about how a mother does that.
 If you’ve ever gone to bed hungry…
 Yeah, I have.
 I have.
 I have, too. I ain’t sell no drugs, though. 
 MATILDA: I have, so- and the opportunity was there not to go to bed hungry 
 and not to see my kids go to bed hungry. 
 I took that opportunity. Survival. 
 What’s goin’ on in my shoes? Survival. 
 Survival for me and my kids. That’s what was goin’ on.
 IYANLA VANZANT: I know what it’s like to be desperate. 
 When you’re desperate you’ll make anything 
 that you need to ease the pain okay. 
 When you’re desperate you’ll tell yourself anything you have to- 
 to justify what you’re doin’ because you’re desperate.
 But you didn’t come to me ‘cause you’re desperate today. 
 You came to me ‘cause you want to heal, 
 ‘cause you want to know the truth, and that’s what I’m here for, 
 to tell you the truth, so that you can be clear in here now 
 to live differently movin’ forward. 
 All of you were imprisoned before you got locked up.
 Yeah. Yeah, I can say that.
 (overlapping) Yeah, you’re right on that.
 (overlapping) All of you.
 You’re right on that.
 I can say that.
 Okay. (stammers) You were imprisoned before you got locked up. 
 Miss Matilda, Miss Brandi, Miss Taii, that don’t make you bad people, 
 but in order to open those bars today there’s some realities 
 that we gonna have to look at that you may not have ever considered. 
 Don’t make you wrong ‘cause you done did the time now. 
 The question is do you still want to do time, or do you want to be free? 
 Do you still want to do time or do you want to be free?
 Because, see, as long as you keep holdin’ on to that distorted narrative, 
 what’ll happen, you’ll stay guilty, you’ll stay imprisoned, you’ll stay broken. 
 That’s not why you came to see me, I hope. 
 Why’d you come see me, Miss Matilda?
 I don’t know why I came to see you right now. 
 I ain’t likin’ you too much right now.
