Dear beautiful brown-skinned girl,
I look into your eyes and see the light and hope of myself.
In this photo you are just about to turn 20, posing outside the
television station where you were recently hired as a reporter. You're
proud of yourself for getting the job, but uncertain you'll be able to
manage all your college classes before 1 and arrive at the station by
1:30 for a full day's work. Even so, your biggest concern is how to
manage your love life with Bubba. Yes, you are dating someone named
Bubba.
On this day you've brought him to the station to see where you work,
hoping he'll be proud, too. He seems less than impressed. The truth is,
he's intimidated. You don't know this, though, because you can see
yourself only through his eyes. A lesson you will have to learn again
and again: to see yourself with your own eyes, to love yourself from
your own heart.
You've spent too many days and years trying to please others and be what
they wanted you to be. You will have to learn that the wounds of your
past—rape, molestation, whippings for "stepping out of place," and not
being allowed to show anger or cry afterward—damaged your self-esteem.
Yet through it all, you've held on to a belief in God and God's belief
in you.
That will be your single greatest gift: knowing there is a power greater than yourself and trusting that Force to guide you.
The trajectory of your life changed the day you answered the call from
Chris Clark, the news director at WLAC-TV. Your response was ignited by
the words of your then-favorite Bible verse, Philippians 3:14. "I press
toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ
Jesus."
Knowing there is a "high calling" is what will sustain and fulfill you.
From where I sit now, viewing your journey, there are few regrets. Only
months before this picture was taken, you wrote a poem about a "woman
becoming." Even then you understood that success was a process and that
moving with the flow of life and not against it would be your greatest
achievement.
Love you deeply,
Oprah
Oprah recently told her bestfriend Gayle in an interview with CBS This Morning:
"The idea of creating a network was something that I
wanted to do. Had I known that it was this difficult I might have done
something else."
When asked if there is ever a time she says to herself, “I don’t need this’, she responded:
"[...] There’s never going to be a time to quit. I will
die in the midst of doing what I love to do and that is using my voice
and using my life to try and inspire other people to live the best of
theirs."
After discussing the negative press she’s received this year, she gave this little gem of advice:
"I like to say this to everybody, [...] because you
failed does not make you a failure and when you know that in the core of
yourself, you can keep trying or you can use whatever happening in that
moment to say, “Maybe I need to move in a new direction.” Actually, I
feel better about out network OWN today then I ever have."
This is AMAZING...So inspirational and Motivational...OnPointCeleb!
