Momma O Gives Us Another Life Lesson!

Courtesy of Necole Bitchie.com

If you could look back at everything you’ve been through in your life and give your teenage self some advice, what would you say? Inside next month’s ‘O’ magazine, Oprah Winfrey included a letter she penned to her 19-year-old self, a teenager she calls a “beautiful brown-skinned girl” who was dating some guy named Bubba and had just snagged a job as a television reporter in Chicago. She tells her younger self that in order to grow, she has to admit that the abuse of the past has changed the way she looks at herself. She also tells her younger self to hold onto her beliefs because that’s her greatest gift and that she must see herself through her own eyes and not the expectations of others:

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

39 years later, Oprah is setting on top of a multi-billion dollar empire but even now she is facing challenges that would have made her think twice about deciding to launch her own Network. She recently told her good friend 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.”

 Side Bar ~ Read more: Oprah Writes Letter to Her 19-Year-Old Self | Necole Bitchie.com

Momma O Gives Us Another Life Lesson!