Starting Over 3, 11/01-02/05 – "I made contact with the manure."by LauraBelle
Doesn't everyone want to be woken up by a hot-looking cowboy? Kalieo knocks on the Starting Over door at 6:00 AM, waking up TJ. He tells her he's looking for Lisa, who comes to the door nothing close to bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. He hands her a cowboy hat and tells her she is to be out at his farm at 7:00 AM for a day of work. If you have to be woken up that early, then that's the way to go.
Lisa starts getting dressed and complains to Allison who is most obviously trying to keep her eyes shut in the bright lights. Kalieo had told her to pack a lunch and Lisa claims to not know how to do that. Allison finds herself with bedhead and a nightgown in the kitchen making a lunch for Lisa, wondering if she'll get in trouble for making it for her. Lisa can only wonder if 7:00 AM meant leave at that time or be there by then. Sigh.
Lisa gets in the SO truckster to head to the farm and can't figure out how to get the emergency brake off. By the time she gets it figured out it's well after 7:00. She pulls into the Sunset Ranch at 7:46 AM and the Kalileo and his fellow ranch hand are none too happy, just like the owner and manager of "The Stand" restaurant a few days ago.
The first chore for Lisa is shoveling horse manure. She believes the point to this day of hers must be for her to be "taken off my high horse; to get humbled." She then finds herself with an industrial strength injector giving a horse a shot and later prying off the horseshoes.
With everyone now more awake at the Starting Over house, Christina finds Jessica and asks her to catch her up real quick on what has been going on with her. She is worried Iyanla will ask about her "accountability partner" and she doesn't want to get in trouble. Jessica is miffed and doesn't want to tell her just so that she can keep up appearances.
Once Iyanla does meet with Christina, she doesn't ask about Jessica, she instead shows her that the package from Doug, her stalker, has come back again. Christina asks Iyanla to please send it back again, and they both agree he probably sent it before he received her letter asking for no further contact.
Christina's assignment today will be to earn back the chips she lost hustling her housemates the day before. For each chip to be earned back she needs to do a loving, kind thing for that housemate. Christina finds herself following everyone around begging to help them.
Meeting with Iyanla, Allison tells her she learned in the first season of Starting Over that she is loved and how to take care of her body in order to survive. Iyanla shares the news with Allison that those lessons have earned her the title of the first celebrated survivor of the Laugh For Cure organization in Charlotte. Allison can't be there to accept, so will tape her acceptance speech tonight. She will spend the day writing the speech. Iyanla urges her to be authentic and not just put on a pretty face.
Back at the Sunset Ranch Lisa is still working hard, dumping a wheelbarrow of manure and having a hard time tipping it over, she then exclaims, "I made contact with the manure." Her next assignment is to catch a chicken. After chasing it underneath and behind trailers and tractors and up a muddy hill, she's finally told she can stop as she has most obviously gone above and beyond the call of duty.
Christina brings Allison a glass of lemonade and Allison can't figure out why she is being so nice. Christina then goes into the other room and plinks a chip into her jar. She finds TJ looking something up on the computer, helps her and plinks another chip. Christina goes into the bathroom and scrubs it clean, plinking another chip.
Jessica won't let her help her, though, as she doesn't trust her intentions, especially after Christina said she needed to do it for her assignment. Finding Allison typing up her acceptance speech, Christina tells her she types 90 wpm. Allison really doesn't get it now, and just lets it go.
Rhonda comes to the ranch and meets up with the ranch hands and their employee of the day, Lisa. They inform her that Lisa was late, but picked things up quickly throughout the day and was quite charming. She feels they were respectful of her and appreciative of her help. Clips are shown of Lisa giving one of them a back massage and later making a sexual joke. She agrees with Rhonda's assumption that she got "sexual" because he guys were nice to her. Lisa feels accomplished now and says she knows her earlier fears were based on the discomfort of trying something new.
Christina does her own laundry and thinks maybe this is a way she could help out Jessica, but Jessica refuses. She says she prefers to do her own laundry, looking at the labels, etc. She advises Christina if she wants to help she should empty the dishwasher. Jessica then finds TJ and complains about Christina to her. She says if things don't improve soon, she'll talk to Rhonda.
Home now, Lisa is crashed out in her bed, after her hard day of work on the farm that started so early. Kalieo shows up again on the doorstep and makes a remark about Lisa's bedhead. He then asks her to do some follow-up work he had forgotten about earlier. He has brought the horses' blankets out and wants her to beat them with a tennis racket and clean the hair off them with a brush. When's she's finished, Kalieo tells her she has done a thorough job and notes that she did some genuine hard work today, more than he had thought he would get out of her.
Allison practices her speech for her housemates, and Jill thinks for a subject matter like surviving cancer, Allison is being way too perky and bubbly. Jessica shares similar concerns.
Iyanla meets up with Christina to check on her assignment. Christina feels she failed. She tells Iyanla about helping Allison, Jill and TJ, but says the negative feedback she received from Jessica made the assignment hard for her to finish. She said Jessica wouldn't let her help her. She held it against her all day and resisted it. Iyanla's no dummy. She knows she is not being given the complete story.
Jessica is brought in, and Christina is immediately nervous not knowing what will be said. Jessica explains her feelings that she didn't want Christina to help her just to fulfill her assignment. Had she genuinely wanted to help her, it would have been different. Jessica is excused and Iyanla tells Christina she doesn't tell the whole truth, and only tells what's convenient for her. Christina tries to say she didn't understand, but Iyanla stops her right away and says, "You played me, Baby. You hustled me." She tells Christina that it was one time she was hustled, and she knows Christina has done it a few times before as well, but this one is major because she implicated someone else.
Preparing herself for her speech, Allison is dressing her wounds and says it's a daily reminder of how ugly cancer is. She thinks about being authentic and knows she needs to mention the ugly, the pain and the wounds behind her cancer. Once she is taping her speech, she mentions the ugliness, but brings it back saying grace is beautiful, and offers a toast to living. She just couldn't help but still be sweet.
Iyanla brings everyone together with Christina and forces her to admit how she has been hustling everyone. She apologizes to Jessica and says she was too scared to admit the truth to Iyanla. Jessica says she would have reacted much differently if instead of begging to do things, Christina instead had asked if there was anything she could help her with.
The chips that Christina needs to earn by helping Jessica are given to Jessica. Iyanla tells her it's her responsibility that if she thinks Christina isn't telling the truth, she needs to call her on it. If she acknowledges it, she can give her a chip. A quick field trip is led into Christina's bedroom where Iyanla shows her housemates all the notes she has on her wall about setting boundaries, speaking out, etc. Iyanla asks the others to call her on these things and if she acknowledges it, they can give her chips. If they feel she is hustling them, they can take a chip away. Christina needs to earn all her chips.
Jessica and Christina talk privately and Christina now admits to being scared to look at Jessica because she doesn't want her to be mad at her. Jessica offers her her support and Christina admits to being scared, as she's never done hard work before in her life. Jessica says, to look at the fact that she was supporting herself at 16 and she has a child. She's accomplished more for herself than she realizes. Later Christina finds herself alone in bed, curled up in a fetal position crying.
The next morning she is working in the kitchen with allison and talks about everything that happened the day before. She says she never wants to lie again, then amends it to she never wants to be caught in a lie again. Christina makes a call to her boyfriend, Paul, telling him about her rough time the day before. She had met him her last day dancing at a strip club. I can't put my finger on it, but she doesn't seem "authentic" when she is talking to him.
Rhonda meets with Jessica about her failure to want to be a part of any 9/11 memorial She tells her she needs to realize that 9/11 has now become an important part of our history and public memorials will now always be a part of it. She shows Jessica two skyline shots of New York City, both with the towers and without. Pointing out that just like the skyline, there's a void in Jessica as well after 9/11, Rhonda tells her she will now create a memorial to somehow find a way to fill that void in herself.
Iyanla leads Group to discuss again making sacrifices. She notices right away something different with Jill. She's put makeup on today. Asked how she is doing with her three cigarette a day limit, she says before she would have eight to nine, but today she has only had half of one.
Everyone is given a piece of paper with message on it that needs to be conveyed to someone else tactfully and without using the words on the card. This is more of the effort to get the women to learn how to support each other. Christina tells TJ her hairstyle is looking more mature than usual. TJ says the word sounds like "old" to her, but she assumes Christina was trying to say "sophisticated."
Jill tells Allison that she is such a big gift-giving person, but her intentions are unclear whether it's for herself or the other person. This is obviously feedback that is being taken by Allison negatively and not positively. Iyanla says that good feedback needs to come from love and concern, focus on behavior, and be based on an observation.
Allison tells Lisa she might have trouble finding a man if she doesn't learn to care for herself. She will find a man that can't take care of her, but Allison doesn't feel it will be gratifying for her. Lisa doesn't care for this comment, but she also knows she doesn't handle constructive criticism very well. Iyanla changes the state to be that she may not be attractive to the men she wants because she is in a transformation process. She just isn't in the place she wants to be yet.
After Group everyone is in the kitchen talking about the feedback assignment. Jill says everyone is on probation because they aren't working well together, they need to learn here how to get it together.
As Allison is helping Jessica plan her memorial, they both agree that the odd thing is that 9/11 had been such a beautiful day. Later in Big Lots, Jessica says she wants it to resemble a bridge and buys an arching candleholder.
Iyanla approaches Jill and wants to know why there are three cigarettes in the ashtray. Jill explains two of them are from yesterday and one from today. Iyanla informs her she isn't above collecting butts, but because of everything Jill has been going through, giving up food, finding out she's anemic, working out, she'll let it go for now.
Jill explains she still thinks needs work on learning to speak graciously. She feels she speaks out of anger too often. Iyanla explains it's behaviors like that that keep Miss Mable (the nickname for Jill's mannequin) from her authenticity. She would like Jill to call and get feedback from the boss that fired her from her radio job, and then call and get more feedback from her mother. Jill compares this all to a root canal.
Moving on, Iyanla finds Christina and wants to talk to her about her "hidden addictions." She believes she is addicted to power and money, both things her careers as a dancer and escort could give her. Iyanla feels there is someone that could help Christina understand the temptation of those addictions more than she could, author Korrine, the ex-dancer/escort that Christina talked to a few weeks back.
Korrine tells Christina her hardest addiction to beat was that of her addiction to attention. She felt she wasn't worthy enough of good attention. She tells Christina it's a hard adjustment to go from being sexy for money to using her brain to get money. Christina knows her addiction are hustling and money, and that's fed by thousands of bills she has at home right now waiting for her to pay them.
Apparently being cued in by Iyanla of the lesson of the day, Korrine tells Christina she has to make a sacrifice or she won't get there. She understands; she had bills too. Korrine advises Christina to throw away her old contacts and come work for her as her assistant. Christina cries at the thought as Korrine warns her, she won't be able to hustle a hustler.
Jill places a phone call to her former boss, Mr. Roshin, admitting to how hard it is to swallow her pride. She follows the script that Iyanla has given her asking if he experienced her reactionary or angry speaking. He admits that yes, she had a tendency to be flippant or pissed off. He democratically says she was slow to commit to certain aspects of her job. She asks if he has any feedback for her, and Mr. Roshin laughs saying he'll have to call her back on that.
Realizing that she didn't die with t he first phone call, Jill now calls her mother and asks the same dialog. Her mom believes her relationship with Jill has suffered the most because Jill never gave it a chance. At the end of the conversation Jill's mother asks her if she's mad, and when she says she's not, her mother says that's an improvement.
Christina finds Jill and excitedly tells her about the job offer from Korrine. As Jessica and Allison set up the memorial, Lisa commits herself to cleaning up the gravel that had been there from Jessica's earlier assignment. It's nice to see her getting more used to manual labor. Jessica says she has been denying herself pain as she's not sure who she'll be when it's gone.
Jill finds Iyanla and tells her that no one told her any surprises about herself during the phone calls. She knows she has a desire to be right and not. It makes her feel shut down and not heard. Iyanla tells her to practice acceptance and mental integrity today and allow her to take five articles off Miss Mabel.
Iyanla then moves on to Christina who explains the big job offer from Korrine, and also explains Korrine's suggestion to get rid of all her old contacts. Christina is worried that this also means sh e needs to get rid of her boyfriend, but she's hoping Iyanla will agree that he is exempt from this. Iyanla explains Paul doesn't know Christina outside the world of dance.
That night Jessica lights up her memorial she and her housemates and Rhonda all gather around as she explains is shows crossing a bridge and living in the present. She built this memorial to show peace, hope and life to honor her mom. She feels now a sense of closure, as she still has the loss of her mother and others, but not herself.
After the memorial service, all the women eat dinner outside. Christina again shares her news and also mentions that she doesn't want to have to give u Paul. She contends that he never goes to strip clubs, he just happened to go that night with friends. TJ pipes up and says if you go to a bar, it's to get drunk. If you go to a strip club, it's to look at girls. TJ immediately knows she said the wrong thing and excuses herself to t he bathroom, saying she is starting to feel like s he shouldn't even talk in Christina's presence anymore.
TJ is right in a way, and Iyanla of course is as well. He only knows her as a dancer whether he goes regularly or not, that was his first knowledge of her, that she was a stripper. If she intended to stay the same, it wouldn't matter, but if she intends to change her whole life, she will need to also get rid of the people who think of her in those terms.
Who do you think will be the first woman to graduate? Email me at LauraBelle@realityshack.com
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