Stories from the Book – Oprah and Having Faith in Ourselves

Born into poverty in rural Mississippi, Oprah’s difficult start to life is illustrated by the fact that she didn’t even receive the biblical name her mother had intended, Orpah, since it was so often mispronounced that it soon became Oprah!  While initially raised in intense poverty on a small form, Oprah was blessed with a loving grandmother who encouraged her to develop her precociousness into, to lend a lyric, a love of reading, writing, and poetry reciting.  Without friends, her imagination and creativity grew far beyond her life’s obvious constraints of race and class.

 At 6, Oprah’s mother sent for her.  In Milwaukee, she lived in the foyer of a tiny apartment with her two half-siblings.  At 9, she was raped by a 19 year old cousin and, at 14, sexually molested by an uncle with whom, in a cruel twist, she had to share a bed each night.  Unloved, she learnt to accept affection wherever it could be found, becoming sexually promiscuous as a teen.  As a poor, pregnant 14 year old Afro-American in 1968, the future looked bleak.

 Just as the scales began their descent towards a life of hopelessness, however, Oprah moved to Nashville to live with her father and stepmother.  She had lived with Vernon and Zelma once before, when she was 8, and at that time had flourished under their love and discipline, as well as the belief and guidance of her 4^th grade teacher, Mrs Duncan.  Returning at 14, Oprah gave birth to a son who, tragically, died at the age of 2 weeks.  The upside of this tragedy was that it gave Oprah the freedom to flourish academically and socially.  Winning a scholarship to a newly-integrated school in a wealthy part of town, and as a positive response to her father’s demand that she achieve A grades, Oprah excelled.  In later winning the local Miss Fire Prevention competition, Oprah became Miss Black Tennessee, noted as much for her quick witted and genuine responses to the judges’ questions as she was for her beauty.  With a scholarship to Tennessee State, she began a degree in speech and language arts before being offered a job reading the news on a local radio station.  Onwards and upwards, Oprah moved to a larger station before becoming a TV reporter and anchor on WLAC-TV.  Despite not quite completing her degree, an offer to move to the much larger city of Baltimore was irresistible.  Here, disaster struck, since Oprah’s reporting style turned off her superiors and many of her viewers.  Naturally emotional and empathetic, Oprah became too involved in her stories, giving them a degree of “feeling” that made them less like news stories and more like a TV drama.

 Not only did her bosses hate her style, they hated her looks.  Sent to New York for a makeover, Oprah’s hair treatment was a disaster.  Her scalp had been burnt to such an extent that her hair fell out.  Bald and unloved as a news reporter, Oprah was demoted, becoming co-host of a low-rating talkshow.  The rest, as they say, is history.  Making it a success, Oprah moved on to a still bigger market, Chicago, conquering talkshow king Phil Donahue on her way to global success.

 The picture is not all perfect, however.  At some time in the future, Oprah would need to deal with her past, a past that not only included the regular and systematic sexual abuse inflicted on her by those whom she should have most been able to trust, she endured a further abusive relationship while in Baltimore, resulting in a (thankfully) temporary decision to take her own life, as well as the scorn of those who have regarded her challenges with weight, or her success, as matters for ridicule and envy.  In addition, despite being a billionaire, like all entrepreneurs she has experienced her share of business failures and disasters.

 Still, one constant in Oprah’s life has been an extraordinary faith in herself, first expressed when as a child she told others that she would one day become famous, as well as a faith in the possibilities of life and our personal ability to pursue them, wherever we happen to sit right now.  Underlying this philosophy is her faith in God, at least as an underlying, benevolent force in the universe on whom we can rely and with whom we should communicate.  In her own word, immense power can be derived from these different expressions of faith,

             My main concern about myself is whether I will live up to my potential.  I still sense that the best is yet to be…The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.  The more you complain, the more you find fault, the more misery and fault you will have to find…Divine   reciprocity, reaping what you sow, is the absolute truth.[i]

 For Oprah Winfrey, the path to better dreams has been paved with an unshakeable faith which evolves logically into a commitment to self-responsibility.  It has also been paved with a focus on forgiveness.

 If at all possible, have a little faith.  If you can, let the little grow into a lot.  A faith founded in the superficial will not last.  The novelty of the superficial always wears off.  A faith founded only in ourselves will not last since there will always come a time when we let ourselves down.  Instead, build a faith in something bigger than yourself, and in values that will last forever.  It’s okay to build self-belief and confidence, but this should always be founded in those timeless truths that are far stronger and more unshakeable than our fragile selves can ever be.

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[i] Bill Adler (ed) (1997) The Uncommon Wisdom of Oprah Winfrey, Birch Lane Press, New Jersey, p.226; other material from section taken from Helen S Carson, (2004) Oprah Winfrey – A Biography, Greenwood Press, Westport.