What I Know For Sure

What I Know For Sure encourages you to create the life you want by pursuing excellence, practicing gratitude, and leveraging bad experiences to become stronger.

The biggest problems you may face are a chance to build your courage, discipline, and determination. Hard things can motivate you to become “fearless enough to give yourself the love you didn’t receive.”

Life was hard for young Oprah Winfrey. All began in 1953 in Mississippi when Oprah’s mother got pregnant. Vernita Lee was unmarried and so ashamed that she hid her pregnancy until Oprah’s birth. It was a time of regret and loneliness.

Some years later, Vernita moved to Milwaukee to find a better job, leaving little Oprah with her grandparents on their small farm. There weren’t other children, so she spent most of her time acting out plays with her animal friends as an audience. She felt lonely.

Things got worse after she moved to her mother‘s house in Milwaukee. When she was 10, Oprah began to be sexually abused by a person her family trusted. She started behaving strangely, but Vernita didn’t realize what was happening. At 14, Oprah got pregnant and did the same as her mother: she hid it.

She gave an early birth to a son who survived only a few weeks. Not long afterward, she moved in with her dad and started recovering from her hardships.

Her father gave her rules and pushed her to learn as much as she could. She was still a teenager but committed to working hard for success and happiness.

When 16-year-old Oprah read Maya Angelou’s autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, she felt validated and less lonely. She recognized herself in the young Maya, abandoned by her parents as a child, and a victim of sexual abuse. Eventually, Oprah met Maya, who became her friend and mentor. Books and people inspired Oprah, and they can do the same for you too! Oprah was also impressed by the story that Reverend Otis Moss Jr told her about his father. As a poor black man, he had a moment of hope when Congress ratified Afro-American people’s right to vote. He put on his best suit and went to the poll. Sadly, he ended up walking a total of 15 miles from one polling station to another because everywhere he went prevented him from casting a ballot. This is the source of a quote that Oprah often recalls: “I vote for him. I come as one, but I stand as ten thousand.” When Oprah was a child, segregation and racism were ordinary in Mississippi. In 1969, the civil rights activist Jesse Jackson visited Oprah’s school and encouraged black students to pursue excellence to…