Last week I joined my good mate Emily for an evening with Oprah.
I first discovered Oprah when I was at Uni. A friend of mine flicked on the tv (when we probably should’ve been studying) and I remember being memorised by this American women with a strange name who seemed so willing to share her life with complete strangers.
I was instantly hooked and watched pretty much every episode until the show finished a couple of years ago.
An evening with Oprah
Listening to Oprah talk last Thursday night was all sorts of awesome, but it was also nothing I hadn’t heard before.
She’s a big believer in the whole law of attraction thing and that was her focus of the talk. You become what you believe, not what you want. What you put out to the Universe is what you get back. Everybody has a thread, a calling. What is yours?
But there were a couple of things that struck me while enjoying an evening with Oprah.
Firstly, she is an incredible storyteller. Every anecdote she told throughout the two hour show was funny, relatable and inspiring with a mild over sharing chaser thrown in for good measure. Oprah is basically a very successful personal blogger without an actual blog!
The other thing that I learned while listening to Oprah talk is that Oprah really loves Oprah.
Honestly. Oprah is Oprah’s biggest fan. She is standing on her own sideline, cheering herself on 24/7. And not in an ‘I’m better than you’ kind of way, but in a ‘I am so good at what I do and I truly deserve every ounce of the success that I have created for myself’ kind of way. I reckon that’s probably something most of us could do with working on bit more, don’t you?
At the end of her two hour talk, Oprah finished with this poem, called Love After Love.
When she announced it was written by a bloke called Derek Walcott I nearly fell off my chair, as my surname before I got hitched was Woolcott. Coincidence? Of course. But it definitely made me sit up, listen and start thinking that at the ripe old age of 42 it might be about time to become my own cheerleader.
Anyway, here’s the poem. I hope it gives you as much inspiration as it has me x
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
Did you have an evening with Oprah? Are you your biggest fan? What was your maiden name?
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