Life After <i>Iyanla, Fix My Life</i>

I chose to wait until the first season of Iyanla, Fix My Life, came to an end before I commented on my participation in the show.

I appeared on the episode, "Iyanla, Fix My Backstabbing Friends," with five female relationship bloggers, collectively known as The Six Brown Chicks. (The show originally aired on October 6, on OWN.)

The Backstory
Nearly two years ago I founded the Six Brown Chicks, a relationship blog for women that tackled life, love and losing the drama. To the outside world, we were doing well with a WCIU.com web series, a book, and a robust following.

Egos blossomed, and, as you know, that's always a dangerous thing.

We were no longer bloggers with authentic viewpoints, we had become individual brands, with covert agendas and business plans. Some Chicks viewed blogging as a business opportunity and desired to get paid; while others blogged as a hobby.

When unspoken expectations didn't materialize, we began to fight like cats and dogs and the blog suffered. As founder, I became the focal point of their disappointment.

Barely a year later, one business-minded Chick left the group via email, and was immediately replaced; regretfully, the replacement Chick -- although a great fiction writer -- wasn't interested in sharing her personal stories outside of Twitter. Not a good fit.

After a tumultuous conference call, yet another business-minded Chick announced her departure, this time on Facebook for the world to see.

And then there were four Chicks, defiantly calling ourselves the Six Brown Chicks. What a joke.

"Iyanla, Fix My Backstabbing Friends"

I wrote the producers of Iyanla, Fix My Life to report their bad behavior, in hopes of clearing the air and getting the group back together. I quickly discovered that I was to blame for much of the chaos.

After several days of raging, crying, communicating, cooking, and bonding, we began to understand the bigger picture: when Dr. Dawj blogged about her experiences with domestic abuse, or when Shoya blogged about toxic relationships and finding love for the first time, or when A Comeaux (Kay) blogged about being a young, single mother in a cold world, or when Yanni blogged about the importance of love and marriage, or when Gina B. blogged about her observations and dating trends, or even when I blogged about being in a relationship with my battery operated boyfriend, we were providing a service.

Some woman, somewhere, needed to read our words.

Iyanla, Fix My Life opened our eyes to the fact that although the journey was ours, the lesson learned was bigger than us; as bloggers, we exist to be of service to the Universal Sisterhood.

As Iyanla taught us, "I am not my sister's keeper, I am my sister."

And this Sister has a renewed mission to embrace and share the trials and triumphs of womanhood one written word at a time.

After the show, we were not immediately 'fixed,' but we're getting there.

As with any relationship, it takes time and effort -- and we're doing the work.