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
From May 2012 issue of Oprah Magazine
Read more: http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Oprahs-Letter-to-Her-Younger-Self-Oprah-Wisdom#ixzz2k5pESkh7
Our Purpose
- Letters.To.A.Younger.Me
- This blog was created as a platform to provide words of wisdom and encouragement to the young ladies in this world. We are looking to collect millions of stories that can be read by people that are in the same situation we used to be in. Letters to encourage that teenage mother that feels like she can't make it through this hard time by herself. Letters to the young girl that sits alone at lunch because everyone thinks she "weird". Letters to the young girl with no self esteem that is giving her self worth to people that don't value it or her. Letters to the young girl that's currently getting bullied. We want these letters to be completely from the heart and most of all, written in 3rd person. Write to the young woman you used to be and explain to her how hard life was and most importantly, how life gets better. Our kids are killing themselves daily due to the lack of encouragement and the feelings of humiliation and/or fear to speak to someone. This is an anonymous platform where they can read and no one will even have to know. This a way for us to help the future while healing ourselves.
