Oprah: Didn't you have a revelation in the hospital?

Brandy: I took the opportunity to ask God, "Do you exist?" Before that I'd been searching, trying to find the right path. What I saw in my dreams were people—all my friends and the people in my life. It seemed that everybody was me. I saw myself in everyone and in everything—including the rain and the fire, the storms and the planets. What I was being told was that everything is everything. The true essence of who I am is love. When I see myself as part of everything, I won't judge or criticize.

Oprah: Will you ever let yourself be abused again?

Brandy: Never. I realized it's my responsibility to take care of myself, because nobody else will. And I can't depend on my mom or anybody else to be responsible for me. And when I take care of me, everything else will fall into place.

Oprah: I love something I heard you once say—that our perceptions change our reality. And when your reality changes, you begin to draw different people into your life.

Brandy: After I left the hospital, I was still with homeboy, but he didn't look the same to me. I didn't see a reflection of myself in him. I wasn't angry like him anymore. I wasn't full of pain. And then one day we had a conversation on the telephone, and he hung up on me. That was the last time I talked to him. He has been out of my life ever since.

Oprah: Your breakdown led to a breakthrough.

Brandy: Yes. Then I met my husband, Robert, and I could recognize him for who he was. I had never really recognized true love before, because I'd always thought love was just protection and ownership. I feel like I'm an angel in this relationship, like I'm helping someone along the way. He's a year younger than me, and I'm his first love.

Oprah: Why did you get married without telling anyone? When you do that, people think you must have been pregnant.

Brandy: That's not true. I'd always allowed people to influence me, and I just wanted to go off and do my own thing.

Sonja: And I wasn't upset with her for doing that.

Oprah: You really weren't?

Sonja: No. I got married six months after I met my husband.