Oprah's 2020 Vision Tour Visionaries: Tracee Ellis Ross Interview

okay so we've been loving our WW visionary conversations so far and I'm so excited about today as dr. rainbow Johnson on the game changing culture shifting delightful hit show blackish Tracee Ellis Ross helps create a new conversation about all that it means to be empowered and a black woman in America today she is a Golden Globe winner a style icon she's a global wellness influencer Dallas please welcome rww 2020 visionary conversation Tracy [Music] but now let me hug you guys whoa Jesse Avalos oh my goodness look at this this isn't a room this is beyond a room but it's it's an arena thank you for flying all the way to Dallas oh I would fly to Dallas for you I'd fly to the moon I know this is actually our very first one-on-one this is our first time together one-on-one a gal has dreamed well it has been so really meaningful and delightful to watch you from afar just flourish just your flourishing and flourishing into everything it means to be a woman who is completely full as I've been talking earlier full and filled with life to herself and you say that you're living an abundant you call it juicy life yeah a juicy and joyful life what does that look like to you well it's interesting I feel like as I've gotten older I've become more myself and the more I am myself the more my life looks like me and it's not the same as anybody else's and so it's been this process of first coming to know myself then accept myself then love myself not on every day be kind to myself even when I don't feel like I want to be and then ask myself all those questions of what I read what I really want from my life yes and it's such an intimate journey that has taken time like even after I've discovered the things I like the things I want to do my dreams who I am then the courage to actually walk towards those things is in it in and of itself its own journey so I've been watching you from afar and I've seen you do lots of things you're the first black woman ever opened the TED talk that was incredible oh it was one of that one of the scarier things I've ever done that was but that was fantastic I like that very much I thought you were in your power but the thing I loved so much that makes my eyes water is that speech that you did glamour in 2017 and you said something at that speech that reminded me of a moment that Maya had shared my Angela chair 20 years ago she said when she was you know in a really down time and that she was with someone who said remember God loves you and she said God loves me and the realization of that that God you're all the time you realize but you don't realize and you had one of those moments tell everybody what that was for you so um you know we walk around like I'm doing what I want to do I'm living my life I'm like make up with dreams happen I'm putting one foot in front of the other I'm making it all go and then you have these moments which actually came I was journaling I was in I had broken up with somebody we'd been broken up with each other for quite some time and somehow I was having a ton of anxiety about telling him again I'm gonna repeat we had been broken up for some time I had anxiety about telling him I wanted to date other people what is that what is that and these are the moments that I say to myself like what is that like the you you kind of question like what is running me right now like what is this dialog I'm having where did it come from is this some tape that's mine is this a cultural tape is this me thinking I have to ask permission of somebody to live my own life and in my journaling I wrote my life is mine and it just I mean I say it and it takes my breath away because one doesn't realize really particularly as a woman particularly as a black black and brown woman in this culture in the swirl of patriarchy and racism and sexism and all of these things these things that are sort of giving us a map that is not necessarily our own that we can actually make choices for ourselves that are not just externally for ourselves but that actually matched that very quiet voice inside our hearts and it launched me into honestly the life I'm living right now really so did you all hear that my life is mine my life is mine can I just take a deck a minute and like take a deep breath cuz the echos crazy are you used to arena talkin lot of people in here 17,000 people's a lot of it it's a pretty night talking wearing a dyke it's like just a little intimate conversation yes but when that realization hit you that my life is mine I would think that that would bring tears to your eyes and that would be the kind of thing that would be like whoa it brought a lot of tears to my eyes it also begged a lot of questions where are the places where I'm not living my own life and you know so many of the epiphany moments that occur are met with grief and tears and my own judgment and then even when you have a moment like that even when I had this moment of naming those words and holding them and hearing them I then also didn't just do it right away everywhere but sort of those moments it's interesting when I did that speech I was terrified to do it I felt like I needed another three days I knew it was too long didn't have time to cut it down and I kept saying to myself you are enough just as you are even if you think it should be different you get to show up just as the speech is and that works this is fine but I was also terrified because I felt like there were such important things going on in the world and I felt like this was not an important thing to talk about the fact that your life is yours and empowering other people to do the same which it is really the only thing most important it's the most important thing dawn on me then then afterwards I had a lot of shame about having revealed something so vulnerable and then it took me about two years to realize how revolutionary the thought is particularly for a woman yes you can applaud for that that's for all of us to actually live in your own life you know in the 70s speaking of living your own life and what modeling for other women is in the 70s for me it was very Tyler Moore Mary Burke Mary Richards was on TV she was a single woman she was a heroine but she was a fictional character and in 2020 I know you realizes that a lot of single ladies point to you as an example of what being an unmarried woman could and should look like and I imagine that's not a role that you ever thought you'd be playing but just I like many of us was taught to grow up dreaming of my wedding not of my life and I spent many years sweeten of my winch to the quarter and also waiting to be chosen well here's the thing I'm the chooser and I can choose to get married if I want to but in the meantime I am choice Felice single happily gloriously single Amen and I do wish there were more examples and one of the reasons I'm okay talking about it and by the way my life is mine that speech really was geared towards that I was like you know I what I'm was forty-five years old and single and I had just pushed out my fifth kid on television in that context so many people ask the question have you ever thought about having children like I mean my child gave my life meaning I'm like are you saying my life is not meaningful yeah and because of the structure that we live in it is so easy for me to feel undermined with all the accomplishment that I've had and my accomplishments I don't mean the Whopper stuff I mean like I take the garbage out when it's before it stinks like I eat food that's good for me I get my sleep I show up for my friends and some end and that makes a life very meaningful and somehow the the rug gets pulled out so quickly when people put me in the you should be married why aren't you why aren't you married yet like what's wrong with you well you know I got that until my 50s so you got a while to go I only have three years but people might keep asking me and I don't mind if people keep asking me because every time they ask me it's an opportunity for me to change the narrative and expand the story of what we can be and who we are as women know I find it interesting though I thought what you just said is so important for people to realize because there look some people in here right now planning weddings and not giving enough thought to the actual marriage and you said that you grew up being prepared like we all were to think about the wedding day you already knew what you were gonna wear right oh my god I was so specific I'm gonna have to wear it to my 50th birthday I wanted to wear like a Victorian dress with the sudden we don't need to spend time on it I want to go with a Victorian dress I have the shoes by the way in and I wanted to wear multiple like vintage nighties like hang off my shoulder with a little bit of a corset and a skirt and then I was gonna change into for the reception yeah a cream suit with a wide leg trouser with a very large exaggerated cuff and a double-breasted jacket and a satin lapel and my man was going to be a really good hugger but you know the partner that I will meet that list has also expanded how he hugs is important but that I feel safe that he's trustworthy that we're equal partners and there's equity in our relationship when we both get to negotiate our partnership not by the standards of what the culture says but instead about what's important to us about connection and relationship I think that's amazing but and also because I was saying earlier a lot of people just want to be married they want a man but they don't have the specifics Oh be specific my mom has always said that be specific make a 5-year plan make a list yeah I mean I need to not get back a little bit with my list making but um can I just say though that I've been dying to have this conversation with you because there are so few women who hold the space of robust abundant lives that are not in context to a man yes someone else well thank you for that and I've always wanted to have the conversation because you are just a couple steps ahead of me and I just mean in the years she's been on the planet thank you and I think that it's so important for me to continue to hear different versions of what a life can be well I didn't marry because I knew that I would not be able to have the life that I had dreamed if I married I didn't marry because I I've been partnered with segment since 1785 but and he is a wonderful man but he is also a traditional man who had his own ideas about what being a wife was and the moment he what I realized and this is what you all don't know for yourself I wanted to feel worthy enough to be asked and the day he asked me I started to feel like Oh God what does it really mean to be married that's when I started to ask the questions about what that really meant and here like you I had all these dreams like all girls grow up being taught that we're supposed to so I remember the first time I heard Roberta Flack saying first time ever I saw your face you all know that song I thought that's gonna be my wedding song that is going to be my wedding song and I had this dream like you not about what to wear but that I was gonna come in a carriage there's gonna be white horses there are gonna be people literally coming with bells on dancing on the lawn and there were gonna be trumpets and so I gave that wedding to a friend including Roberta Flack singing you know as you were talking yes you know what I did what when I was nominated for the Emmy Miami the first time it had been 30 some odd years as a black woman had been nominated in that category yes we need actors in comedy or musical but I wore a white dress that was a coup - a Ralph Lauren dress that was made on me and for me and I realized during that process it was my moment to be married to my own life whoa and to actually walk in what I had created and built that this was a moment that was not just mine it was all of ours all of us who have been being the leads in our lives for eons but somehow don't get the moment of recognition and I was gonna marry my own self my own experience and live in every juicy moment of that whether I won or not knowing that I was holding what I wanted for all of us then you won I didn't wish can you imagine if I'm a year I would be married myself reward know I'm never going on just as good so you said you've had to learn to dismantle expectations of you what does that mean um some of it has been my own personal expectations of myself there's one of the things I say to myself like sometimes what I think of myself is none of my business not only what other people think of me but sometimes my own ideas of myself like just enough thank you so much goodbye you've had five minutes now you'll need to stop or you can do it but in another room please but really it's been about unpacking these ideas that often I don't even know I've adopted ideas about who I think I should be like I don't know I used to think it was my job to be this quiet demure gentle woman who would listen and smile where did you get that idea from it's all over the movies Oprah music you're watching too much little woman yeah yes well I laugh like this my hair is big yeah when I smile my mouth opens wide I get loud sometimes sometimes I'm soft and sometimes I'm not and I get angry and there's all these different pieces of me and I didn't know where they were supposed to fit I was trying to become this thing that I thought others expected of me and the truth is that all those things that I tried to hide about myself I taught myself how to smile so my top lip would go away and how is that terrible terrible all these ways that we sort of take a lot of practice to guide us I do a lot of practice on everything you better be practicing the right things yes yes yes what's your habit on the right stuff not on teaching yourself to be smaller than you are I want to know how your idea that's a good that's worth applauding did you see that's worth a party up applauding applauding oh it's like yeah that's where the party out there you good look at that - how is your idea of beauty changed over the years oh it has really evolved yeah um I remember watching the Nina Simone documentary and thinking to myself my god why is her name not next to the word beauty I have never seen such a woman inhabiting her skin I mean I was my whole body was sort of riveted from that I was like this is this is what I call beauty when I see people who are just in their skin living at that height of themselves I am blown away and so my you know there's an industry around Beauty that is based on telling people you need to look like that so that you can buy these things and I just completely disagree I feel like the industry of beauty should be based on meeting yourself because all of it meeting yourself exactly where you are or you aren't oh I'm so glad you said that it's my favorite it's the fastest way to where you want to go yes right through where you are yes yes yes and the moment and it um that takes me to something else but I want to answer you about beauty but will you remind me to say something about may I okay it's okay okay so I'm so oh it's time for the shoes to come off take them off yes good good good so um beauty for me has been about discovering myself and about owning what makes me feel good listening to it what makes my heart sing and actually meeting that person and I find when I like pretty is a whole different thing like we can pretty is like a thing that I don't know you can get it in a can at 7-eleven or something I don't know it's give yourself an Instagram filter yeah yeah yeah you know I mean I don't it's like but but I don't want to traffic in that yeah I want to traffic in that stuff again that feels juicy and abundant and that actually has the long-term run of like making you feel a certain way and I often see myself and go huh wow I feel so much prettier than I look but at the same time the pool cares there are so many things happening in life that my school cares what I look like that is funny because that's happened to me oh is that you see yourself you know I thought I was looking better than that it is so yes by the way I admit to me the mirror lies do sometimes yeah it was in the mirror you see your feelings right and I'm my yeah and then you get on the red carpet or whatever and then you get home and you're like oh okay III read where you told Health magazine that one of the good things that you do is you talk nice to your body what does it sound like well that's in contrast to the other language happening yes yeah um I don't know I just try I try really hard like there's some times there I'm like oh we're not gonna do that because I feel like often I'm like squeezing myself everywhere like just squeezing it yeah I'm getting older it's fascinating isn't it yeah it really is it's just different isn't it it is and nobody talks about it because everybody wants to be stopped in their Botox tracks oh just a bit yeah you know what I say what Botox I'm like no laughs wash your face change your underwear look at a tree come on like but really because if we spend so much time thinking about and talking about what we look like how are we gonna do all the other things we need to be doing it's hard it's hard art and I get it because you want to feel good I personally I work out a lot because I like to feel strong in order to get to it through a 15 hour day I got to feel strong you know that's why I eat good food when I'm working because I gotta feel strong otherwise you will how do you refill your bucket because listen every time we see you out on a carpet or out in the world you come with this vibrancy full of life I know it cannot be that way all the time so how do you refill renew um I have an arsenal of tools but because of how busy and full my life is time seems to be the thing right there's just never enough of it so I have learned that and by the way it's full with such good things yes like dreamy it's like a big adventure it's like just a joyful thing which by the way in and of itself can be scary you know when when the dreams happen it's sometimes it's like okay I can't I really do this but in that I have found that doing my best to stay is my biggest gift and staying present for me often means going as slow as the slowest parts of myself I'm moving slowly from A to B a really practical one it's gonna sound crazy but peeing when I have to pee all of us do it we forget we hold it it seems really intimate and weird but like it's one of the ways that I know I'm like present with myself holding space for myself and like really taking care of myself I try to eat really well sometimes ice my mind starts moving as fast as my day and as fast as all the things I need to be doing so soup is really helpful I love soup soup is a very meditative experience because you can't either being around no have to sit down eat it and I don't drink my soup get a spoon get a spoon that's what I do do you got a blow on it then you gotta put it in your mouth then you got to swallow it cuz I don't know but you can chew really fast and not really chew yeah but like soup there's like a whole you and I define meditation as doing what I'm doing while I'm doing it which is so much being fully present being fully present being fully present so eating soup is really helpful I love a bath I often have to wake up for work at 4:30 in the morning and sometimes I will take a bath at 4:30 in the morning because it just it doesn't like shock me into my day it just gently moves me into my day um I have really good tribe of girlfriends and friends around me that are just weren't on the show for nothing yes that mirror back to me the truth of who I am when I can't see it that love me when I can't feel like I can't love myself I'm really close to my siblings Rhonda and Ross are here I'm Noddin Ross where are you guys so I have I have Ronda my older sister Meath and chutney my younger sister than Ross and Evan I talked to Rhonda a lot and Evan a la chutney and Ross we don't talk as much they're not as talkative but they are heart people so hi brings me to this you were just saying all the incredible things that are happening in your life was there a moment or a time where you weren't so sure that you would be able to step into your own shoes because I can imagine growing up with the legendary Diana Ross being drink on that being your mom that were there are times you felt like you're in the shadow or did you always feel like you were in the light I always say and I don't just say it I mean it I felt like I grew up in her embrace not in her shadow in her love and in her care my mom is extraordinary and the Diana Ross people know like the mom doesn't Dinah Ross doesn't hold a candle to my mom I just really know wow she's she's topline mommy top line top line may I just say this to you I've said this to your mother and all the years I've done interviews I've only been nervous three times in my life the first was with your mother and the first is I'm gonna the first is with your mother because when your mother was on The Ed Sullivan Show with Dinah Rock with Dinah Ross and The Supremes the very first time it was a legendary moment and those of you who are old enough to have been colored people and then Negroes you know that that was back in the day when we would call people and say color move along come people tell people all right now it's up with Toronto people um and you call everybody by the time you finish talking everybody calls people on they'd be off but the first time I saw her on that show I felt like that Nikki Giovanni poem where the girl went to Sunday school and heard about Shadrach Meshach and Abednego she says she heard about all of them in the fire and then she heard of Shiva who was black and comely and she said I want to be like that and the first time I saw your mother that planted the seed inside me that something else was possible for my life that's what your mother did for me that is what she did for me and I honestly I honestly do not think I would be who I am where I am with all that I have learned in game had there not been Diana Ross had there not been nine of us so I know she's bigger as a mummy but for me and the rest of the world what she meant to us and so to answer your question first of all thank you for sharing that and I I don't take that lightly and I haven't in my life taken that lightly and as a result you know it's interesting being her kid like will I be able to find my own space and I always felt um I could feel the energy coming at me but I knew that the energy was coming at me because I was a piece of something someone that other people loved yeah and so I wanted to find my own thing so that I was deserving of any attention that came at me so that it didn't feel like I was a fraud in the light mm-hmm um and my journey you know and part of the reason my mom is such an extraordinary mom is because she really all five of us are so different and she's really given us the love the breath the safety to find our own space and journey um and so she mothers you all differently yeah but the same but the same you can tell we're all from the same mommy in terms of the way we walk through the world the way we interact with people I mean I don't know if I could sit here and do all that let's think I don't know I don't know I don't know if I could articulate that in a quick way but finding my own space and my own self has not been in response to my mom but there was a part of me that I hit off even though it was my original dream which was to sing yeah so I mean I've done well as a comedy lady you know what I mean and then I started this journey of finding my own voice and realizing that I had a socially active voice in a political voice and as a woman just finding my ability to use my voice and to speak up for myself and others but there was this little girl in me whose original dream was to be on a stage in a sparkly dress singin and so did you hide that because your mom you don't think it was on purpose yeah I think it was very unconscious that I tucked her away it felt dangerous it felt like I was gonna be obliterated and compared I remember early on there was an interview you did with um Lisa Marie Presley mm-hmm um and I felt like oh that's a scary place to be in the comparison and I was I somehow I just tucked her away but it's been a dream of mine and at 47 like this year two of my biggest fears and dreams have happened and so I'll backtrack to about what was 2007 Obama started campaigning and right before that because I've been said I meditate a lot and I journal and I do all these things right so I was sitting under my tree in my backyard I'm very big with trees I find them to be some of the wisest of beings on this planet just true they just really I learned so much from them so I'm sitting under my what I call my it was my tree in my backyard and I was meditating this came out Papa Papa Papa Papa Papa found my voice Papa Papa Papa Papa found my voice and I was like ok I don't know what that means I went upstairs at an hour later they called to ask me to campaign for Obama and I started this journey of living a space louder than my own experience using my voice for more than just myself then about eight nine months ago a year ago I guess it is now a movie came along to sing and you said yes yeah I said yes it's free can you tell how hard it is for you to talk about this I'm sweating right now first of all and I feel so inarticulate no no and you said yes and I was scared even though I was terrified even though I'd never sang publicly even though no one had ever seen heard me sing even though every time this makes you cry every time there was a moment to sing with other people I would make it funny because that way people wouldn't listen with the year Diana Ross's kid ear right so another way I hid myself and I kind of it was as if I was walking around with not all of me because there was a part of me that I wanted to shine that I wanted to live that wasn't so it was like it was an arm tied behind my back so I did this movie and I play a singing star and I had to record seven songs whoa and it comes out in May oh ma and it was there is in during the process it was strange I don't seem to get scared while I'm in the process I get scared after some people are gonna hear it just in general like I do scary things and I'm like just go jump off the cliffs go I'll go and then I gets the other side I'm like what did I just terrifying that person and so there were moments during the movie that during the movie I wasn't frightened but what I was doing was stepping into all of me I was taking my scare my most terrified like little girl and bringing her forward and saying sweetheart you can do this now what happens when you when you told your mother okay so this is it was okay now I won't cry this was one of the most beautiful moments of my life I think so um I don't know if you guys know this but listening to music in your car is the best place to listen to your music so it was like mom I'm ready she's like you're ready for what I'm like I'm ready for you to hear okay I was like I'm gonna pick you up so I picked her up and we sat in her driveway in my car came out of the house came out of the garage got in my car closed the windows and I was like okay here it is mom here here's me and you can imagine you know we all have fears we all have these things that we've hidden away that we think are not worthy of coming forward because they might not be good enough they might be compared to somebody else and I had to realize that it's not the sound of my voice it's the honesty of my voice that is the key I'm not supposed to sound like my mom I'm never supposed I'm not even supposed to beat her I can't fill her shoes no one can fill her shoes all I can do is make a pact with myself to be myself on the ground that I get and even make more ground for me you know does get away so I got her in the car and the first note happened and she like she was on this light so she like pushed my arm and then she turned to me and her face was covered in tears and she said finally that's a good life moment that's a good life moment yeah that leaves me speechless that's really a good life moment I can just see that that's incredible you told me to remind you to say me I thank you okay so um what were you talking about at the time but it made sense then well I can do it now so a lot of people use the affirmations I am yes and they they worked for me for a minute but they also the fastest place to where yes the fastest way to where you want to go so the fastest place to where I want to go is through where I am and I discovered that the space between where I am and where I want to be is often the thing that frightens me the most so that again where I am and where I want to be is that's race yeah okay it's actually that scary space you know like I want to sing how in God's name do I get there how do I face this fear so what I discovered is if I break it down to the bite-sized pieces and give it a may I as opposed to an I am the may I offers a gentle invitation while honoring where I am and gently inviting me to where I want to go so may I know that I am a singer allows me to not feel like a singer may I know that I'm worthy of love without effort allows me to gently move my way there and for me for example fun is a tough one because I always feel like there's something I should be doing so may I know that I can experience fun and then it allows me to break those pieces down even smaller like may I do things that feel light-hearted may I do things that make me smile as opposed to this big scary thing that's over here yes and I like that because it's gentler yes you know often times you're doing an affirmation I am beautiful yeah and then you're like I can see about me here then you're looking back at yourself going you can say that all day long yeah yeah and our words are so important yes the way we use them and one of my biggest most regular prayers is gentle gentle and I gotta say it twice because just once sometimes I don't hear it gentle gentle Tracy give yourself 1,000 breaks and then give yourself 1,000 more and have you reached that point that I was speaking of earlier in that Lady Gaga shared with us in Fort Lauderdale of radical acceptance [Music] gentle acceptance real acceptance honest acceptance yes I feel like for me the journey is mostly about wholeness and making space for all of the all of the many mixed bag of feelings I think that's so important to Tracy because so many people are striving for particularly women perfection perfection perfection getting this right I hear so much devil when really the goal is to be whole yeah and you know it's how I met loneliness um loneliness was this big scary monster for me for so long so long this thing that I was always running from like but I'll be lonely and uh if I don't do anything for my birthday if someone doesn't plan something for my birthday I'm like this thing like well I'm single well I'm gonna be alone for the rest of my life who's gonna take care of me but I've answered all those questions and I've realized that like the wholeness makes space for all of it I can feel scared that I'm gonna be lonely and I can also ask myself but don't you like being alone don't you like being but I love it so don't trees joyful solitude I talk for a living it's wonderful to be quiet I love it it feels really good um but so all these ways that wholeness kind of gives me the biggest of containers to hold the truth of my experience as opposed to this idea of what I'm supposed to be living and that feels so much better even wellness sometimes even people saying well you're looking for a balanced life I'm like well sometimes it's not very balanced like how do I be with myself when it doesn't feel balanced how do I love myself even when I feel like I'm unlovable what are those steps that I take what are the like daily actions that I can take and I feel like that is one of the the benefits the beauties of being single like I have time to ponder these things and I get to be choice phul about who I spend my time with and how I spend my time because there's no given there's no like I gotta go do this and when my dog passed away like I haven't been ready to find a new partner that little love of my life yeah but you know I don't have to wake up and walk her I don't have so it's me so I get to be choice 'full about the day I'm living and how I'm doing all that well I know you had a 20-year dream to create a company that fully represented our individual beauty and let me tell you I got the pattern in my dressing room and I was using it yes absolutely tell us about that dream that comes out of acceptance - does it not the truth is I tell the story through all aspect the same story through all aspects of my life I'm joyful self acceptance and allowing us to take up our own space and live in that but so pattern is a hair company for curly coily and tight textured hair a space a mass of people a community of individuals that I am a part of that have mirrored back loving myself to me that are not serviced by the beauty industry ten years ago when I finished on girlfriends I wrote a haircare brand pitch and it's taken me ten years to get it off the ground some of it is the fact that the world has now wake awaken to our power and our beauty and our glory and the gravity defying awesomeness of our hair but pattern has 2/3 missions one is to create effective products that work and are not toxic that are good for your hair and actually make it juicy and joyful juice is the word you seize the word and the other is to change the paradigm for how we as curly coily and tight textured people because I don't believe hair has a gender are marketed to so that we can actually love the way our hair authentically comes out of our heads and see another space and other imagery that actually matches up with our beauty and our glory and all of that so it has half and it is so exciting and I love being a CEO and Founder I love using my brain in this way it's similar to the directing and the producing like it's so much fun I was gonna ask you when you're directing because you directed how many episodes now see webisodes a blackish one of girlfriends okay so when you're directing is it harder to direct other people who you're usually working with or hard to direct yourself in that I think it's hard to direct myself yeah mostly because I'm such a difficult actress no um no because it's a different part of my brain as an actress I act from my heart and my gut and as a director it's my mind in my eyes so the switch the gear switch is really difficult um so I prefer if I'm not in it you do yeah yeah yeah and so I like being in charge I was gonna say do you like being the boss very much so I think I was raised to be one a boss lady I would say you have filled your own shoes beyond and when you step back and you look at your life from the long lens what stands out as the thing you're most proud of in continuing to become more of yourself I think embodying my real middle name which is Tracy joy do that at the same time yes because I feel like joy is revolutionary it holds a different space than happiness and I don't know that happiness is really the goal but a sense of wholeness and joy and I feel like we need a lot of that right now and it allows a space to kind of be present in our lives but I don't know I think I'm in a space where it's time for me to dream new dreams um which is a really fertile and fun place for me but I really like this idea of being joyful in my own humanity so that there's another example of what it looks like to allow ourselves to be the humans we are thank you Tracy I'm joy Ellis Ross for joining us in the arena of 17,000 people in Dallas Texas love to your mom got it so much fun [Applause]

Channel: WeightWatchers

Views: 821,073

Keywords: ww, myww, wellness, oprah, Tracee Ellis Ross, oprahsvisiontour2020, resolutions, oprah tour, oprah 2020 tour, weight watchers, oprah interview, Tracee Ellis Ross interview, oprah interviews Tracee Ellis Ross, 2020 vision tour highlights, oprah tour highlights, oprah Dallas, oprah inspiration

Id: 2vMCUv2DihY

Length: 44min 8sec (2648 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 20 2020