Yesterday, I Cried: Celebrating the Lessons of Living and Loving

What is the lesson in abuse, neglect, abandonment, rejection?What is the lesson when you lose someone you really love?Just what are the lessons of life's hard times?Bestselling author Iyanla Vanzant has had an amazing and difficult life -- one of great challenges that unmasked her wonderful gifts and led to wisdom gained. In this simple book, she uses her own personal experiences to show how life's hardships can be re-languaged and re-visioned to become lessons that teach us as we grow, heal, and learn to love. The pain of the past does not have to be today's reality. Iyanla Vanzant is an example of how yesterday's tears become the seeds of today's hope, renewal, and strength.

"Life is about cleaning up the crap and, while you're doing it, being okay with the fact that you have to do it.... A word of caution. You can't get caught up in the crap! If you do, you will surely lose sight of the real meaning of life and lose your Self."

Iyanla Vanzant knows plenty about dealing with just such "crap." She has led a difficult life, full of periods of abuse and self-loathing, but she has managed to learn "the lessons beneath the tears" and move beyond her grief and into understanding. In Yesterday, I Cried, she passes these lessons along, continually stressing that past hardships can and should be used to teach us how to grow, heal, and love others and ourselves. The message is one that has been echoed in her bestsellers One Day My Soul Just Opened Up and In the Meantime, but when presented as a memoir, the result is particularly moving.

As any regular Oprah viewer knows, Vanzant is a feisty and charismatic orator, and her no-nonsense style translates well into print. She is candid about her experiences without ever painting herself as a victim, effectively coming across as inspirational rather than preachy or self-pitying. The tone of the book is especially engaging because she seems to be actively working out her problems as she writes, gently pulling the reader into what becomes a mutual catharsis. "Of all things to master," she asks, "why did I have to pick tears?" By the end of Yesterday, I Cried, she finds the answer. And in searching the depths of her own soul, she encourages others to do the same.