Oprah Writes To Her Younger Self :: “Rape and molestation damaged your self-esteem”

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