How Oprah rose from the bottom to become the most successful woman ever

Oprah is a name our generation and many others will have grown up hearing and teaching their children. She’s a national and global influence for so many people. She is as powerful as she is beautiful, inspirational as she is motivational.

In her Golden Globes acceptance speech (2018), Oprah remembers being inspired by Sidney Poitier’s win of the Cecil B. DeMille Award while watching the show on her mother’s television when she was a kid. Oprah’s experience was equally impactful, to think that she went from a little girl staring at the television with wide eyes to the most successful woman today is shocking.

Best known for The Oprah Winfrey Show, Lady O’s very own talk show wasn’t an easy one to obtain. Oprah, whose original name was Orpah Gail Winfrey, was born to an unwed teenage mother who had moved them to rural Kosciusko, Mississippi to live with her grandmother.

She grew up in such poverty stricken conditions, she had to wear potato sacks as dresses, prompting the local children to verbally and physically abuse her.

Starting her career as a young Black woman was a difficult one, to say the least. As a child, she’d entertain her “audience” by speaking to farm animals. When she was a teenager living with her father in Nashville, She worked at a grocery store next to his barber shop, where she wasn’t even allowed to speak to her customers during store hours.

After a grueling time at work, at the age of 19, she caught her first break from Channel 5’s Chris Clark. She had lied and said she was able to write news stories and operate a camera when interviewed by Clark. That, coupled with her poised and confident attitude, Oprah landed the position.

By the time Clark recognized she was unable to do either, he had already seen Oprah on camera, and it had become too late. Straight from her website, Clark mentions the “magic’ that Oprah exudes which captures us all.

“What you see in Oprah today is what I saw so many years ago. Oprah, you had the magic to communicate on television, and that is natural born. You just can’t learn that. You can’t develop that. You got it or you don’t got it.”

From there, it was history. Oprah’s recent Golden Globe speech said so many things in a few short minutes that dissecting one portion of her words wouldn’t be enough for a singular conversation. The biggest takeaway is now there is speculation that in just 2 short years, Oprah will be running for president.

While these are still speculations, there has been a ton of controversy that’s already emerged from news outlets, but, as usual, she isn’t letting it phase her. The polymath of media remains as poised and collected as she was during Chris Clark’s interview all those years ago, leaving us to guess if she will be taking over the political world in a short period of time.

For now, Oprah has all of our support no matter the direction her career decides to take. The mogul has love that reaches national borders, and is sure to crush any opposition that stands her way, no matter what Donald Trump believes.

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