Oprah’s Tearful Speech at Power of Women

oh hey, delicious, thanks birds, that was so good, you know, all those years, 25 years of doing the Oprah show and going to work at 5:30 in the morning in the makeup chair at 6: 30 and literally crawling home at night for 25 years. I used to wonder what ladies who had lunch did, I was really drawn to paintings of

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having lunch and, that's just how it is, but even better, this is an em

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ing lunch. You know, I changed the way I looked at

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in 1989. A book I read by a man named Gary Zhukov is called Soul Seed and in Soul Seed he defined what true power is, what authentic power is and his definition of authentic power. , that is, the type of power that can never be taken away from you. not your looks or your fame or your money or your square footage but authentic power is when personality your personality comes to serve the energy of your soul when you are able to align who you are and who you have become in the world with what what you've really come to do in the world when your personality serves the soul, so I thought a lot about how that book actually changed my life and I was building a house in Santa Barbara and like anyone who's ever built a bathroom or a house or anything, nothing happens on time and it was 2002 and we were supposed to be finished and it wasn't finished and I was like I can't wait to get home and I'm finally going to have a great Christmas and I'm going to do the kind of Christmas I dreamed about the messenger and I have cards, you know, so I'll have the rods at the door, but I didn't have a floor, so it's a little difficult. to do that, so I started thinking if I can't do that Christmas well, what am I going to do for Christmas, my house is not even ready and what can I do, so I started while walking sitting among the trees. under that tree because my favorite time is to be alone with my thoughts and while I was alone with my thoughts I was thinking about what the next best possible Christmas would be for me and I thought about the best Christmas I've ever had.

The best Christmas I've ever had. What I had was when I was 12 years old. My mother received welfare. She lived with my mother and a half-brother and sister in Milwaukee. My mother called me, the oldest, to tell me to come into a room and tell me that we wouldn't celebrate Christmas this year. She said we won't have Christmas, what about Santa Claus? There is no Santa Claus I had already figured it out but well, I was ashamed and ashamed because for the first time I had to face the reality that yes, what I have been suspecting that we are not like other children that we really are poor is true so we are not going I'm going to have Christmas and there is no Santa Claus.

My first thought after feeling embarrassed was what will my story be? What am I going to tell? Everyone when we go back to school is showing their toys and I have nothing to talk about. What I am going to do? I'm not going out tomorrow when everyone is in their backyard showing off their toys. I have for Christmas I'm going to stay inside I'm going to pretend I'm sick what's my story it's going to be very late that night some nuns showed up at our house and they brought a basket with food and they brought toys for My uh, my brother, my sister and I was overwhelmed with joy that those nuns showed up, not because they brought me a Tammy doll when I really wanted a Barbie doll.

I was overwhelmed because someone remembered we existed and someone cared enough in the middle of the night to come to our house with food and toys and also now they would have a story, so as I contemplated what was the best Christmas I've ever had, I thought how could I? make that possible for someone else, what could I do? To create the same kind of experience for other kids, I then took 50 members of my team at Harpo Harriet, one of them Sherry the Table, and I hired another 50 people in South Africa and we went to South Africa with the idea of ​​creating something that we ended up .

I started making a documentary about Christmas goodness called Christmas goodness using my personality to serve my soul energy, so we went from town to town offering toys and clothes, food, soccer balls to children who had never experienced Christmas before and early in the morning. you could see them lining up by the thousands to come and we actually went to 10 or 12 villages to do this and people at the time said to me oh that's so frivolous and the kids won't remember it and why don't you use your money to do something more substantial

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and I said that maybe they don't remember the toy, maybe they don't remember the clothes, although what excited them most was when the children opened boxes that contained clothes because, as their caregiver told us, having new clothes didn't make them feel. poor and for many of these children it was the first time they experienced something that was new to them, they may not remember what they had in the box, but they will remember that someone remembered them, they will remember the experience, so during this entire experience Nelson Mandela had invited Stedman and me to stay at his house, so when Nelson Mandela invites you, you stay and I was so nervous I thought, oh my God, what am I going to talk to?

Because it's 10 days, it's 10 days, no. just a dinner it's not a lunch it's 10 days it's 10 days breakfast lunch and dinner with nelson mandela what am I going to say stedman said why don't you try to listen so I did it I had 29 mills with nelson mandela at the beginning really really really I was very, already you know, like my God, it's Nelson Mandela and on the third or fourth day he and I would sit together in his living room sharing the newspaper at the end of the day talking about events in the world and one of the things.

We came to talk about the power of education to overcome poverty, so in one of those moments of lucidity I told him well, you know, I always wanted to build a school, he said, do you want to build a school or the support you want. build a school, so you got up and made a phone call to the Minister of Education. I was planning on building it at the time, but that's fine. The Minister of Education comes later that day and we begin the process of building a school. The reason I wanted to build a school because I tried different things because I always knew, even before I could articulate, that my personality needs to serve my soul.

I always knew that to whom much is given, as the Bible says, much is expected, it is not fair. I expected it would take a lot, so from the first time I came to Chicago and started making more money than I needed to pay my bills, I reached out and was going to form a sister group trying to help the girls on the project and discovered I couldn't do what I really needed to do to change the life trajectory of those girls because every girl that we took off the project and spent time with on the weekends, my producers and I had to come home to the same place. environment and it was impossible to simply change the way they saw themselves in the world, so through trial and error I learned that to literally change the way a girl sees herself I would need enough time to spend with her to be able to hiring the right kind of teachers, the right kind of administration, being surrounded by a nurturing, nurturing environment that would allow that girl to change the way she felt about herself and saw herself in the world, for example.

That the idea of ​​creating a boarding school surrounded by beauty was the type of school I would like to go to and I tell you when I first sat down with the architects and I told them that I wanted to build a great school, a great school for leaders that will change

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's lives and they will be able to break the cycle of poverty for themselves and their families forever and become part of the true and true new and free South Africa well the architect told me well these are poor girls these girls these girls I said well where are the closets where is the space where is the drama where is the theater and they said well these are poor girls these girls don't really come from families with clothes and many of them have lost their families and I said but they will have clothes and they will be able to make it drama and they will be able to excel beyond anyone's dreams and that's exactly what happened five years later, as Ava mentioned, as Ava mentioned, we're now getting closer.

I'm going at the end of November and we have our fifth promotion, um this. It comes in June from 43 girls graduating in South Africa. I have seven graduating in the United States. I have 20 girls in the United States. One of them, Shade, is here today. Get up, chade. Say hello to this young woman who is now a junior at Stanford. I met her. when she was 12 and uh I did the interview and I said tell me why you want to come do you want to come to school and she says I really want to come I really want to come a dozen truths and uh and she has done a magnificent job during seventh grade , 8th grade, 10th grade, 12th grade and from the time when, my beloved daughter Kirby, who is also here today, Gayle's daughter, came to talk to the girls at the school that Kirby attended at Stanford and since the moment Shadee heard Kirby speak. about Stanford, uh, she said she knew those were her people, so when we went to Stanford and looked at the campus, she said mom, these are my friends, these are my friends, so this is what I know, being here today and listen to Susan. and gwyneth and salma and rebecca and jim and anna and all of us is a really good thing but I've always known this about celebrity the true power of being someone that someone knows and I really believe that the only difference between being famous and not being famous is that more people know your name so the only difference between understanding that is understanding that what selma has done what susan has done what anna has done what rebecca has done what jim has done what I have done you can do it too because the real Philanthropy comes from living from the heart of yourself and giving what you have been given.

How will you do that? How will you use your personality? the energy of your personality to serve that which is the calling of your soul. I know for sure in any life, no matter how fantastic it seems glorious how much attention you get, how many square feet you have in any life and every life is improved by sharing, giving and opening the space of the heart. Your life improves when you can find a way to share it with someone. Otherwise, what we have done, you can do, true empowerment comes when each person leaves this room and makes a decision, maybe that decision is to write a check and support some of the wonderful organizations you have heard about here today. but the real decision is how will you use yourself?

How will you use all that you have been given to serve that which is greater than you? How will you use that to become truly empowered? Now it is a beautiful thing to receive an award and be on the cover of variety thank you very much it is a beautiful thing but the true reward is in the lives you can touch and the people you know you have impacted my beloved mentor teacher friend mother maya angelou passed away last year And I remember when I opened the school I was so happy that it finally happened, we did it and we went through all the bureaucracy and everything that it takes to build a school from scratch and I said to Maya, oh my God. maya this will be my this goes this is my legacy and maya said you have no idea you have no idea what your legacy is your legacy is every life you have touched your legacy is every person you have met whose influence you felt every person so she said it's every person who ever watched a show and decided they were going to go back to school or watch a show and decided I was going to leave my husband and stop being a victim of abuse every person who watched a show and said I'm victim of abuse and because I saw this I can now defend myself every person who gained a voice thanks to you you have no idea what your legacy is your legacy is every life you touch and that is why, when you leave here today the decision is whose lives, how you will use yourself in such a way that your impact and your legacy will live beyond you.

The great reward for me is knowing that what I am doing and how I have done it and how I choose to live in the space that I call God as in God I move and I breathe and I have my being and I try to move from the center of that is capable of literally touching other people's lives uh, I told the girls when they first came to school we found them in villages and we found them in townships we went out some children went to school in a wagon on a railway track and others under a tree And I told the girls that the trajectory of your life is about to change and I only ask one thing of you and that is that you give as much of yourself as I do and this school is willing to give that to you and Becky Sykes who is at the helm of our foundation. and spends a lot of time on her feet, Becky spends so much time with the girls, I can attest to this and this is the real reward.

I just wanted to share this with you. One of my shadows is here because she is the only one of the 20 girls there. at school in the united states at school her girls range from brown mount santooke wellesley johnson c smith spell spell colorado oregon stanford she's the only one who had fridays off so i told everyone, i'm leaving class to come to variety No, but June of this year I want to say that girls are in the world, we have done this thing that Susan was talking about, touching girls' lives and when you change a girl's life, you don't just change one girl's life. you change the life of the community, you change the life of a family because what thegirls is that they take it home, they take it to their families, they take it to their communities, so my girls are all over the country doing internships, working and doing multiple things uh during the summer months and one of my daughters I call them my daughters uh avakile who is at the university of colorado was working and returned to cape town to work in cape town this summer and she had always wanted to be a doctor and plan to specialize in medicine and this summer she made the decision to change to public health, so when they leave, I always tell them to follow, to let me know, to send a text, they don't even have to say they're arriving, to send an emoji emoji hello I'm here uh but she wrote me this amazing letter that will be something I will treasure forever just wanted to share a little with you today she wrote this on June 11 after arriving in Cape Town and being in a house with all these students from different parts of the world she writes this is a girl which we found would have had a very different life but she writes the other day we were all sitting around the table and began to have a heated, passionate and respectful and compassionate and, most importantly, satisfying discussion about what we want to be ours. own country and our nation, what we should do as young people of this country to improve it for the first time.

I truly believe that I have hope for a better future. I talked about what male privilege means, what white privilege means, and chains of victimization. Oh, Mom, it was challenging but very eye-opening. It felt good to know that I could share my opinion with a group of only men and know that if my opinion was not agreed upon. It was solely because of the quality of my opinion and not because I am a girl. I find myself able to let go and be me without fear of what the next person thinks when I think I can go deeper with someone I do. and most of the time it turns out that that person was also looking for the same thing I'm learning I'm making mistakes I'm laughing I'm deciding I'm asking and I'm questioning and I'm also growing and I have to tell you that I am full of gratitude, so much gratitude that I can see the places that I can see and know the people I have known and continue to be favored by God, that is the true reward, thank you.