Oprah’s Tearful Speech at Power of Women

all right [Applause] oh hey yummy thank you thanks Yves that was so good you know all those years 25 years of doing the Oprah show and going into work at 5:30 in the morning in the makeup chair by 6:30 and literally crawling home at night for 25 years I used to wonder what the ladies who lunch were doing really I was attracted to like paintings of women lunching and and so this is what it's like but even better this is an empowerment lunch you know I changed how I viewed power about 1989 there was a book I read by a man named Gary Zhukov called cedar the soul and in Cu the soul he defined what is true power what is authentic power and and his definition of authentic power meaning the kind of power that can never be taken from you not your looks not your fame not your money not your square footage but authentic power is when the personality your personality comes to serve the energy of your soul when you are able to align who you are who you've become in the world with really what you've come to do in the world when your personality serves the soul so I thought a lot about that that book was actually life-changing for me and I was building a home in Santa Barbara and as anybody who's ever built a bathroom or a home or anything nothing ever happens on time and it was 2002 and we're supposed to be finished and it wasn't finished and I was like I can't wait to get in my house and I'm finally gonna have a great Christmas and I'm going to do the kind of Christmas that I dreamed of from The Courier and you know cards I'm gonna have the reeds on the door and but I didn't have a floor so it's a little difficult to do that so I started to think if I can't do that Christmas well what am I gonna do for Christmas my house isn't even ready and what can I do so I started as I was walking around through the trees sitting under that tree because my favorite time is to be alone with my thoughts and as I was alone with my thoughts I was thinking what would be the next best possible Christmas for myself and I thought of the best Christmas I ever had the best Christmas I ever had was when I was 12 years old my mother was on welfare I was living with my mother and half brother and sister in Milwaukee and my mother called me the oldest to say into a room to say we won't be having Christmas this year I said we won't be having Christmas what about Santa Claus there is no Santa Claus I had already figured that out but okay I was embarrassed and I was ashamed because for the first time I had to face the reality that yeah what I've been suspecting that we're not like the other kids that we really are poor is true so we're not gonna have Christmas and there is no Santa Claus my first thought after being embarrassed at a shamed was what will my story be what am I going to tell everybody when we go back to school and they're showing their toys and I don't have anything to talk about what am I gonna do I'm not gonna go outside tomorrow when everybody is out in the yards in their yards showing the toys they got for Christmas I'm gonna stay inside am I gonna pretend I'm sick what is my story going to be well late that night some nuns showed up at our house and they brought a basket of food and they brought toys for my my brother and my sister and I was overwhelmed with joy but those nuns showed up not because they brought me a Tammy doll when I really wanted a Barbie though I was overwhelmed because somebody remembered that we existed and somebody cared enough in the middle of the night to come to our house with food and toys and also I would now have a story so as I was contemplating what is the that was the best Christmas I ever had I thought how could I make that possible for somebody else what could I do to create the same kind of experience for other children so I took 50 members of my team at Harpo Harriett one of them sherry the table and hired another 50 people in South Africa and we went to South Africa with the idea of creating something that we ended up doing a documentary about called Christmas kindness Christmas kindness using my personality to serve the energy of my soul so we went from village to village offering toys and clothes food soccer boy soccer balls to children who 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 said to me at the time oh that's so frivolous and the kids won't remember it and why don't you use your money to do something else more substantial Oprah and I said they may not remember the toy they may not remember the clothes although they were most excited the children to open boxes containing clothes because as their caretaker said to us having new clothes made them not feel poor and for so many of these kids was the first time they'd ever experienced having something that was new for them they may not remember what they got in the box but they will remember that somebody remembered them they will remember the experience so during this entire experience Nelson Mandela had invited Steadman and I to stay at his home so when Nelson mendelian by true you stay and I was so nervous I was like oh my god what am I going to talk to because it's ten days it's ten days it's not just a dinner it's not alleged ten days it's ten days breakfast lunch and dinner with Nelson Mandela what am I gonna say Stedman said why don't you try listening [Applause] so I did I had 29 meals with Nelson Mandela at first really really really I was very you know like Nelson Mandela and by the third or fourth day he and I were to sit together in his living room sharing the paper at the end of the day talking about events in the world and one of the things we came to talk about the most was the power of Education to overcome poverty so in one of those lucid moments I said to him well you know I've always wanted to build a school he said you want to build a school Oh brah you want to build a school he got up and made a phone call to the Ministry of Education wasn't planning on building it then but all right the Minister of Education comes over later in the day and we start the process of building a school the reason why 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 much is not just expected much is required so from the first time I came to Chicago and started to make more money than I needed to actually pay my bills I reached out and was going to form a sister group trying to help young girls in the project and I discovered I wasn't able to do what I really needed to change the trajectory of those girls lives because every girl that we would take out of the project and spend time with on the weekends my producers and I they would have to go back home into the same environment and it was impossible to just change the way they saw themselves in the world so by trial and error I knew that in order to literally change the way a girl sees herself I would need enough time to spend with her to be able to hire the right kind of teachers a right kind of administration to be surrounded by an urging in nurturing environment to allow that girl to change the way she felt about herself and saw herself in the world so the idea of creating a boarding school that was surrounded by beauty the kind of school that I would want to go to and I tell you when I first sat down with the architects and said I want to build a great to school a great school for leaders that will change the lives women and they will be able to break the cycle of poverty for themselves and their families forever and become a part of the real and true new and free South Africa well the architects said to me well these are poor girls these girls these girls I said well where the closets where the where's the space where's the drama where's the theater and they said with these of poor girls these girls really don't come from families with clothes and a lot of them have lost their families and I said but they will have clothes and they will be able to do drama and they will be able to excel beyond anybody's dreams and that is exactly what has happened five years later [Applause] as Ava mentioned as Ava mentioned we are now approaching I'll go over at the end of November and we have our fifth graduating class this coming June forty-three girls graduating in South Africa I have seven in the United States graduating I have twenty girls in the United States one of them shidae is here today stand up shut egg say hi this young woman who's now a junior at Stanford I met when she was 12 years old and I did the interview and said tell me why you wanted a cup do you want to come to the school and she says I really want to come I really really want to come a dozen realease and and she is done magnificent work throughout seventh grade eighth grade tenth grade 12th grade and from the moment my goddaughter Kirby who's also here today who's Gail's daughter came to speak to the girls at the school Kirby was attending Stanford and from the moment Shaddai heard Kirby speak about Stanford she said that she knew that those were her people and so we went to Stanford and looked at the campus she said mom oh these are my peeps these are my peeps so this is what I know that being here today and hearing from Susan and Gwyneth and Selma and Rebecca and Jim and Anna and all of us it's a really good thing but I have always known this about celebrity the real power of being somebody that somebody knows and I really think that the only difference between being famous and not 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 rebecca has done what Jim has done what I've done you too can do because true 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 your soul's calling I know this for sure any life no matter how fantastic it is how glorious it seems how much attention you receive how much square footage you have any life and every life is enhanced by the sharing and the giving and the opening up of the heart space your life gets better when you can find a way to share it with someone else so what we've done you can do the real empowerment comes when every person leaves this room and makes a decision makes a decision maybe that decision is that you will write a check and support some of the wonderful organizations you've heard here today but the true decision is how will you use yourself how will you use everything that you have been given to serve that which is greater than yourself how will you use that to become truly authentically empowered now it is a beautiful thing to receive an award and to be on the cover of a variety thank you very much it's a beautiful thing but the true reward is in the lives that you are able to touch and the people who 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 finally it happened we got it done and went got through all the bureaucracy and all the stuff that it takes to build a school from the ground up and I said to Maya oh my god Maya this is gonna be Mike this is going 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 was felt by you every single person so she said it's every person who's ever watched a show and decided that they were going to go back to school or watch the show and decided that I'm going to leave my husband I'm going to not no longer be a victim of abuse every person who watched a show and said I am a victim of abuse and because I saw this I now can stand up for myself every person who gained a voice because of you you have no idea what your legacy is your legacy is every life that you touch and so as you leave here today the decision is whose lives will that be how will you use yourself in such a way that your impact in your legacy will live beyond the doing so the great reward for me is knowing that what I'm doing in and how I've done it and how I choose to live in the space that I call God how in God I move and breathe and have my being and I try to move from the center of that is able to literally touch the lives of other people I said to the girls when they first came to the school we found them in villages and we found them in townships we went out some kids were having school in a boxcar on a railroad track and some under a tree and I said to the girls the trajectory of your life is about to change and I only ask one thing of you is that you give as much of yourself as I and this school is willing to give to you and Becky Sikes was a head of our foundation and spend so much stand up Becky it's been so much time with the girls and vouch for this and so this is the true reward I just wanted to share this with you when am I should a is here because she's the only one of the 20 girls who are in school in the United States in school from the girls range from Brown Mount Holyoke Wellesley Johnson C Smith spell Spellman Colorado Oregon Stanford she's the only one had Friday's off so I said everybody not getting out of class to come to variety no but June of this year I mean so the girls are out in the world we've done this thing that Susan was talking about touching the lives of girls and when you when you when you change a girl's life you don't just change a girl's life you change the communities like you change a family's life because what girls do is they take it back home they take it to their families they take it to their communities so my girls are all over the country and internships and working and doing multiple things during the summer months and one of my daughters I call them my daughters a Vakeel a who's at Colorado College was working and went back to Cape Town to work in Cape Town this summer and she'd always wanted to be a doctor at plan to major in medicine in this summer made the decision that she was going to switch to public health so when they leave I always say just just keeping just let me know just send a text you don't even have to say you arrived just send it emoji emoji hello I'm here but she wrote me this amazing letter that will be something I treasure forever I just wanted to share a bit of it with you today she wrote this on June 11th after having arrived in Cape Town and being in a house with all of these students from different parts of the world she writes this is a girl who we found who would have had a very different life but she writes the other day we were all sitting around table and began to have a heated passionate respectful and compassionate and most important fulfilled fulfilling discussion about what we want our own country and our nation to be what we should be doing as the youth of this country to make it better for the first time I really believe I have hope for a better future we talked about what male privilege means what white privilege means and the chains of victimization oh my mom oh it was challenging yet so insightful it felt good to know that I could share my opinion with a group of only guys and no but if my opinion was disagreed upon it was solely because of the quality of my opinion and not because I'm a girl I'm finding myself being able to let go and be me without fear of what the next person thinks when I think I could go deep with someone I do and most of the time it turns out that person was also seeking 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 I am filled with gratitude so much gratitude that I can see the sights that I can see and meet the people I have met and continued to be favored by God that's the true reward thank you you [Applause]

Channel: Variety

Views: 3,034,117

Rating: 4.8428445 out of 5

Keywords: Variety, Variety Studio, Oprah Winfrey (Celebrity)

Id: 6Rfn94k717U

Length: 21min 42sec (1302 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 20 2015