How One Person’s Belief Changed Her Entire Life | Oprah Winfrey

 It was a challenging time.
 I'd already been raped at nine.
 I was being sexually assaulted by a family member
 and another family member.
 He did not know that.
 None of my teachers knew that.
 What those lunch-room conversations allowed for me
 was validation that bad things were happening to me,
 but that I wasn't a bad person.
 That somebody saw that I was a good person.
 That's big.
 One of the most powerful people in the entertainment industry,
 a global force.
 What an own.
 Oprah.
 People cry because nobody's ever asked them,
 how are you?
 Were you okay in there?
 Every day his little check-in with me
 was a way of saying, are you okay?
 But also, I see something in you.
 And I know you can do better.
 He said that your curiosity defined you.
 If it defined you, then what defines you now?
 The interest in validating people and their own growth.
 That's what gives me tingles all over.
 I could start crying right now.
 I feel deep gratitude for the life that I've been able to live.
 Wow.
 I always say, Oprah, I have a bachelor's degree
 in general studies and a PhD in pain.
 Ooh.
 Can you tell me this?
 And if it's improper, then let's take it out.
 But this is probably going to surprise you.
 Uh-huh.
 Really?
 When did you begin to believe in yourself the way she did?
 Well.
 So we're going to see.
 We're going to see.
 David, that guy's here.
 He's here for the person who believed in me.
 Before we start, allow me to thank my friends at Canva.
 This podcast is possible because they believed in us.
 Canva has a two-step plan.
 Go build the world's most valuable company
 and then do the most good it can.
 They give their product free of charge to schools and nonprofits
 because they are on a mission to create equal opportunities
 that empower people all over the world.
 Welcome to the person who believed in me, I'm David Begno.
 In this series, we sit down with remarkable people,
 big names in their field.
 And we talk about the person who changed their life.
 For me, this podcast is about big people
 talking about the person who believed in them
 before the world did.
 And our first guest on this podcast is none other
 than Oprah Winfrey.
 None other than.
 And for me, I must say, there is no more meaningful guest,
 especially to start this with.
 Then you, because of how much the show
 and you changed my life.
 Yeah, I love that beautiful letter you had.
 Calligraphy for me.
 Dear Oprah, as I launch, do good and with this podcast,
 there's no guest whose presence means more to me than yours.
 A profound part of who I am, both as a human
 and as a storyteller, is shaped by watching you live your truth
 and introduce the world to people living there
 as to the Oprah Winfrey show.
 The life lessons I learned from that show
 laid the foundation for this project,
 the person who believed in me.
 Thank you for believing in me and for saying yes
 with gratitude.
 David, oh, so well written to you, Mike.
 Beautiful.
 I will save it forever.
 You know, I have letters from everybody
 that I've talked to in the world that was important to me.
 And I have boxes and boxes and boxes of them.
 It's my treasure.
 From her early days as a student with big questions
 to becoming one of the most influential voices of our time,
 Oprah has spent her life helping others see their own words.
 She built a career, a global community on empathy,
 curiosity and connection.
 But behind every great journey as someone who said,
 I believe in you.
 And for Oprah, that person was a seventh grade teacher
 who noticed her curiosity opened a door
 and helped her to step through it.
 Over the next hour, we'll explore how the belief took root,
 how it continues to ripple through everything
 she has built since.
 That's good.
 That's a good intro.
 We're going to start with this.
 Oh my gosh.
 Oh my gosh.
 Do you remember when that was taken?
 Yes.
 That's Mr. Abrams on the Oprah show.
 Mr. Eugene Abrams.
 Mr. Eugene Abrams.
 Wow.
 You know, I was thinking I did not have any record of...
 I knew I was going to be talking about him today.
 And I told Nicole my comms person, you know,
 in my Lincoln high school book,
 and see if there's one of those tiny pictures
 because I thought that was the only photograph.
 I have never seen this.
 Yeah.
 How did you get this?
 From his daughter.
 From his daughter.
 From his daughter.
 Wow.
 In fact, watch this recording.
 Wow.
 Oprah.
 From the time I, my father met you,
 he would come home with tales.
 And he would say,
 there was chaos in the cafeteria.
 There was all this noise,
 but there was this one bright, bright young woman sitting there.
 And he would tell us that he'd give you a book.
 And then the next day you would come home and you have read.
 He read the book overnight and would discuss it.
 He knew you were special.
 He knew there was something about you that separated you
 from all the other students in that cafeteria.
 And that's why he worked so hard to get you into
 Nikolae high school.
 He saw something in you.
 And he said,
 you had it.
 And he would always say it.
 There was something about you that just stood out.
 Oh my.
 Dear Jesus, that is duty.
 Oh my goodness.
 Now, this is such a full circle moment for me,
 because when I was building my school,
 that's what I look for in South Africa.
 When I was building my school in South Africa,
 I was looking for the girls who had it.
 And I never described myself as having it,
 but I was looking for the girls who had that same quality
 that I knew that I had growing up that's really indescribable.
 You either have it or you don't.
 It's the ability to be resilient in the face of challenges.
 It's the ability to see the world as you believe it can be
 and not necessarily as what's around you
 or what people are telling you.
 It's the ability to believe bigger than what people see for you
 and being able to hold on to that vision for yourself.
 And when I went from school to school,
 trying to pull girls out of little schools underneath the tree
 where there's a hundred kids sitting on the ground,
 and I would say, I'm looking for the girl who has it.
 I'm looking for the girl who has it.
 And the fact that he saw that in me is pretty incredible.
 Speaking of schools, do you recognize this place?
 Yes!
 You know where this came from?
 The Yearbook.
 The Yearbook.
 The Quill.
 Yes.
 So I was only there for seventh and eighth grade.
 And it was Mr. Abrams, this man who used to see me
 just as his daughter, her name is Judy.
 Judy.
 Judy said he would see me in the cafeteria
 and there would be kids throwing spitballs
 and yelling and screaming and craziness.
 I always hated the lunch hour because it was just so much chaos
 and I'm an introverted heart.
 Which people find hard to believe.
 I know.
 I'm an introvert who knows how to have extroverted tendencies.
 But I am really, I gather my strength.
 I gather my sense of being.
 I gather myself in the silence of myself and have always done that.
 I think because I was raised on a farm with my grandmother
 in solitude with just my grandmother
 and my grandfather who I now believe must have had dementia.
 But he was just a shadow in that house.
 I never had any real contact or any real memories
 except he was just always lurking in the background.
 And so it was my grandmother and it was me.
 And I became very content making up stories for myself
 with myself based on stories that my grandmother was reading to me
 or to learn to read myself.
 But yes, I am more introverted than I am extroverted.
 You had gone from, was it Nashville?
 So let's set the scene.
 Before seventh grade you had gone from Nashville
 to live with your mother in Wisconsin.
 So here it is.
 I live with my grandmother until I was six.
 Right.
 Move to Wisconsin for kindergarten and first grade.
 Because I got myself moved in the first grade.
 You know that whole story.
 So kindergarten and first grade.
 And then moved back to Nashville.
 Move to Nashville with my father for the first time.
 So I'm like meeting my father for the first time.
 Yeah, Vernon Winfrey.
 Vernon Winfrey.
 Then Nashville.
 Back to remember back to Wisconsin.
 Wisconsin.
 Right.
 And then back to Nashville.
 And then back to Nashville.
 So the time you go back to Wisconsin,
 you're living with your mother Vernita Lee.
 Yes.
 And you go to the school.
 It's seventh grade.
 You remember your first memory of Mr. Eugene Abrams.
 My first memory is always in the cafeteria.
 Because I guess he must have been given cafeteria patrol.
 So I don't remember him as a teacher of mine.
 He wasn't a teacher of mine.
 He just was on duty,
 patrolling the wild and crazy cafeteria.
 And would see me every day.
 I'd be the kid sitting in the corner.
 Well, the other kid did the one all of their crazy stuff.
 I'd be sitting in the corner with a book.
 Of course,
 that is the way to be completely ostracized by your fellow students.
 You know,
 and he,
 I remember he would just walk by and time and again.
 He would always speak to me and he would ask me,
 what are you reading?
 And sometimes he would give me a book.
 And then I would go home and read the book.
 I would devour books.
 You know, books were my companions, my friends.
 It was my way of seeing a world beyond my own world.
 Because at the time,
 I was living with my mother in Milwaukee,
 she had two other children, my half-brother and sister.
 And we were on welfare and doing the thing that you do.
 You're just trying to survive and get through every day.
 And just having someone to see me
 and appreciate the fact that I was a reader
 and not to be made fun of for being a reader.
 So I was a lot in my, you know,
 community made fun of for talking the way I talked.
 Oh, you're trying to act like you why you talk and why you talk.
 And so having somebody appreciate that or value that
 was really important to me.
 So I started to look for him every day.
 Like I'd wait for him to like come by the table.
 He's going to come again.
 And one day he just stopped and said,
 he said, you're not like all the other kids.
 You know that, right?
 Yeah, I kind of know that.
 And he said, I am going to get you out of this school
 and I'm going to put you into school
 where you can actually be really challenged.
 And that's what he did.
 So we're going to come to that in a moment.
 There was a quote from him where he said,
 I gave her a book and she came back the next day
 and she had read all of it.
 Yeah, I don't remember what that book was.
 No, but all of it.
 Yeah, but because that's what I would do.
 What do you have to do when you're a kid?
 Would you go and like seek him out after that?
 Like you see him again.
 Yes, I would.
 Yes, I would.
 Yes, I would.
 Because this is a thing I wanted to read this to you.
 I brought this little poem I wanted to read to you.
 Okay.
 It reminded me of this because another one of my great mentors is,
 you know, I know most people think I'm going to talk about Maya.
 Maya, who believed in me before.
 Right.
 But by the time I met Maya,
 I already had a pretty strong belief in myself
 that I was going to be okay.
 But Mr. Abrams, at the time that I met Mr. Abrams,
 I still had not gone through one of the worst phases of my life.
 I was actually being sexually assaulted at the time that I met him.
 He did not know that none of my teachers knew that.
 And so having a voice, a voice outside of yourself saying to you,
 you're okay when you have that going on and all the stuff at home going on.
 But here's a point I wanted to read to you from that Maya Angelou had written.
 It says, line thinking last night,
 how to find my soul at home,
 where water is not thirsty,
 and bread loaf is not stone.
 I came up with one thing and I don't believe I'm wrong,
 that nobody but nobody can make it out here alone.
 Alone, all alone, nobody.
 But nobody can make it out here alone.
 There are some millionaires with money they can't use.
 Their wives run round like banshees.
 Their children sing the blues.
 They've got expensive doctors to cure their hearts of stone.
 But nobody, nobody can make it out here alone.
 Alone, all alone, nobody.
 But nobody can make it out here alone.
 Now, if you listen closely, I'll tell you what I know.
 Storm clouds are gathering.
 The wind is going to blow.
 The race of man is suffering.
 And I can hear the moan because nobody,
 but nobody can make it out here alone.
 Alone, all alone, nobody.
 But nobody can make it out here alone.
 Damn, I've never heard that Maya poem.
 Wow.
 Isn't that a good one?
 Wow.
 That's a good one.
 That's a good one.
 And it's so true.
 Wow.
 None of us, no matter where you are in your life, made it alone.
 You might have been a Mr. Abrams who was prominent and you saw that person every day.
 But I think every word spoken, you know, like Maya also says,
 my favorite teaching of hers is that your legacy isn't one thing.
 It's every life you've touched.
 Every word spoken that allows a person to see themselves in a better light helps them not feel so alone.
 And I remembered, you know, you heard me tell the story of when I was just a little,
 what I was speaking in Nashville and I was, I think it was eight years old at the time.
 And Tish Hooker, who was the wife of John Jay Hooker, who was running for governor,
 came up to me.
 They were, you know, campaigning for governor and they were doing all the black churches.
 And she stopped me after service and she took my hand at my chin in her hand and she said,
 my, my, you have such beautiful brown eyes and such bee stung lips.
 Now I used to hate my lips.
 I used to feel like my lips were too big and my nose was too wide and I was doing everything to try to minimize that.
 And her telling me that I had such beautiful brown eyes and bee stung lips allowed me to see myself differently.
 I never forgot that.
 And I was eight years old, which was it.
 So whenever I see little girls and oftentimes little girls who everybody else doesn't say,
 oh, that's a pretty little girl, I will purposely go up to that little girl and say something to that little girl about her beauty,
 about her charm, about her brains, about her being intelligent, about something.
 Because I know it's an impression, even from a stranger, it leaves an impression that lasts.
 I thought you might want to know, but this podcast is at the heart of a company I founded called Do Good Crew.
 I've spent 25 years telling stories.
 It used to be the bad news and now I want to focus on the good news, the everyday heroes who are doing extraordinary things.
 You can join us. We do live events, but we also have the newsletter. It's free.
 And you can sign up for it by going to www.TheDoGoodCrew.com
 Am I understanding you to say that Mr. Abrams came into your life and believed in you at a point when you had not yet been rooted in believing in yourself?
 Oh, I didn't know anything. I was, I'm telling you, I was being sexually assaulted on a regular basis.
 And I was, I'd already been raped at nine. I was being sexually assaulted by a family member and another family member.
 And I felt like I am just some, I'm, I must have a scarlet letter.
 There must be something about me that, you know, attracts people to abuse me.
 And what I now know it is is that people see that you come from a broken home.
 You don't have a strong family life. You are a lonely kid. You are an introverted kid.
 That's the kid they're going to look for. That's the kid they're going to look for. They're not looking for the strong outgoing, you know, I will tell on you in a minute kid, they're looking for the kid that looks vulnerable.
 And so now I realize that is your own scarlet letter that you're wearing when you are being preyed upon by people who are looking to do terrible things to children.
 So Mr Abrams coming into my life at this time when that was going on and there was just, you know, many times I, we didn't even know if we were going to, you know, something I'd come home and the lights weren't on.
 The electricity had been turned off because there wasn't enough money. My mother was working as a domestic while also, you know, on welfare.
 And it was, it was a, it was a challenging time. What did those lunch room conversations with him give you that you weren't getting someone?
 Oh my God. Don't make me, I'm not going to cry.
 So what those lunch room conversations allowed for me was validation that I wasn't a bad person.
 That bad things were happening to me, but that I wasn't a bad person that somebody saw that I was a good person.
 And allowed me to feel seen just to feel seen.
 And I, I recognize as do you in all of these years of interviewing people that whether you do a story on them or not, just spending time with people and asking them questions about their lives.
 I mean, there used to be a time where people would say, well, how do you get people to cry like that? Why do people come on your show and cry?
 Because nobody's ever asked them, how are you?
 You know, nobody actually says, how are you really doing? Are you okay?
 It's, it's, it's, it's why a couple of years ago, or a few years ago, and Elmo said, is everybody okay out there? Everybody went nuts because everybody isn't.
 There's a damn puppet ask everybody okay. And it's because most people, particularly in our world, I think we do a lot of communicating in terms of social media, but nobody is really asking, are you, are you okay?
 Are you okay in there? And what Mr. Abrams did for me every day his little check-in with me was a way of saying, are you okay?
 But also I see something in you and I know you can do better. He actually said to me, I know you can do better.
 You can do better. You have the potential to do better. Yeah, the potential to do better.
 We used to have lunch together all the time back when I was 13, I had been moved from Nashville, where Mrs. Duncan was my teacher, to Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
 And this man is the person who's responsible for getting me into one of the best high schools in Milwaukee at the time and still is.
 When integration of public schools there was just beginning, and officials had opened the doors for 16 black students.
 And this man, Mr. Abrams, was the man who made sure that my name was included. Mr. Abrams, come on here. Mr. Abrams!
 Hey!
 How are you? Good to see you. My arms are on.
 I remember sitting in the cafeteria at Lincoln High School every day. What was I doing there?
 Asking questions. You were the most curious 13-year-old I ever ran across.
 I was on a project for the university in your junior senior high and you were the funnest lunchtime.
 You always had a book and you always had a question. Yeah, I do remember always reading during lunchtime.
 And you always came up with a question. And the average student would ask the question,
 put answer number seven down on the paper and you were just curious.
 So Mr. Abrams was an educator from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.
 And he was conducting university research when he first spotted you. That's why he was at the school.
 Oh, he wasn't a teacher. He was doing research at the school. That's what to me makes this so incredible.
 Mr. Abrams was essentially passing through. He worked from the university and this little girl
 was someone who stuck out to him in such a meaningful way.
 And a quote from him was, you were the most curious 13-year-old girl I had ever run across.
 And so in his research, he sees this girl starts to recommend books, starts to ask questions
 and then himself gets asked, hey, we need a few black kids to send to what a white school.
 And he said, I know the kid. I know the kid. I know the kid. You got to take this girl.
 Her name is Oprah Winfrey.
 Yeah.
 And then you went to this school, you get bust across town.
 On the bus were some domestic workers, some mates.
 And you were quoted as saying at one point, that was when I realized I was poor.
 Yeah.
 How so why?
 Well, I think as long as you're in an environment where everybody is just like you.
 Everybody goes to the same grocery store and you're eating the same things and you're basically dressing the same.
 And it's just life is just what it is. It didn't occur to me that I was considered poor until I was bust to the suburbs.
 It wasn't like busing. You know, like kids were actually put on buses.
 I actually got on the bus every morning with all of the domestic workers.
 A city bus.
 A school bus.
 Not a school bus.
 And sometimes my own mother would be on that school bus.
 We'd be on that city bus.
 Had it to work.
 Had it to work because the school that I went to was in the suburb of Fox Point where she worked for this Jewish family.
 And so that was embarrassing to me sometimes.
 Like when my mother would be on the bus with all the other maids.
 And then I would be getting off of the school, going to the school.
 And I didn't want people to know at the time that my mother was a maid.
 Now I can honestly say that I am proud to come from a history of domestic workers.
 Because what else was available to an uneducated black woman in the 50s and 60s and early 70s.
 And my mother, my grandmother actually expected that that's what I would become.
 You know, I've told that story of my grandmother saying you better watch me now because one day you have to learn how to do this for yourself.
 She was hanging up close and I knew that is not going to be my life.
 But my grandmother had no greater expectation of for my life than that I would become a domestic worker.
 And so that's Oprah what fascinates me.
 So the experience you saw of your grandmother was being a domestic worker of your mother.
 Where was it that you saw something that was bigger than that that led that girl to become this woman?
 Well, you know, I was when I got into my father, the notion of what you could be changed.
 But it didn't grow to extend to the idea that I could be anything other than a teacher, which I always thought it was going to be a teacher.
 Because of not because of Mr Abrams, but because of my fourth grade teacher Mrs. Duncan who by the way was on that when you had Mr Abrams on the show.
 Miss Duncan was on too.
 I know that was that was so good.
 So Miss Duncan was my fourth grade teacher who I not only did she I don't know if she believed in me, but she certainly recognized that I had something going on for myself.
 And because of Mrs. Duncan, I always wanted to be a fourth grade teacher.
 You know, I really had wanted to be an actress, but my father said no daughter of mine is going to that's not going to happen.
 Forget that because Hollywood is casting couches and forget that that is not going to happen to a daughter of mine.
 So I had just decided to give up on that dream.
 And then there's this, you know, fateful moment that I'm in the misfire prevention contest that fateful moment.
 And I had no I had no thought had never thought about what I would be other than a teacher.
 I thought, well, I will major in speech and drama and I will teach theater because I can't be in the theater.
 I will teach theater.
 And it was my 16 year old self that had turned on the today show that morning and I saw Barbara Walters.
 And when I was in the midst of this contest, being asked a question about what do you want to do with your life?
 What do you want to be when you grow up?
 All the other answers had been taken that already been two girls that said they wanted to be teachers.
 So I really just was just trying to think of what search and what can a woman do?
 What can a woman do? What can I say a woman can do?
 And I said I wanted to be a journalist and tell stories in order to help people to see their lives differently.
 I don't know.
 I channel that answer.
 And so seeing a Barbara Walters and you know, I remember also when I was in Baltimore and already started my career in television.
 And I had said to an agent that I had in Baltimore that I just wanted to have my tape submitted, David.
 Would you please submit my tape to Good Morning America so that I could substitute for Joan London?
 Wow.
 And this agent said to me, I'm not going to even do that because they've already got a black person.
 I go, no, they don't.
 They really don't.
 And they say he said, well, they've got Brian Gumpel on in BC.
 I go, but he's on, he's on, he's on channel four. He's on in BC.
 They go, well, there's only going to be one.
 And so he would not submit my tape.
 I need to take a moment just to thank Canva for backing this podcast.
 Their support is what makes these conversations possible.
 Canva's guided by a clear idea.
 Build something incredibly valuable and then use it to do real good in the world.
 That's why they provide their tools free of charge to schools and nonprofits,
 helping to create equal access and opportunity for people all over the world.
 Before we get back to Mr. Abrams, I also want to bring up where Dennis Wanson,
 when he puts you on the upper windshield show.
 I'll never forget the story you tell about that where Dennis said,
 I'm going to give you this show during Come True, but I want you to do two things.
 Don't change who you are, what you look like and how much you weigh.
 Yeah.
 I want you to just stay the same.
 I know. That's what America loves.
 Yeah. Well, it's so interesting because I had been brought to Baltimore
 and in the midst of this great big campaign of what is an Oprah and Oprah and over.
 I was set to anchor the co-anchor of the six o'clock knows for a year.
 The same year the Barbara Walters was doing it with Harry Reesner.
 We know.
 Wow.
 Oh my gosh.
 Remember that was the biggest.
 Well, you two young.
 Come on, I'm a student of broadcasting.
 Of course.
 Yes, that was the biggest thing.
 But six o'clock in Baltimore.
 That's where they told you you were too emotional reading the news.
 That was too emotional.
 And I was also told that my nose was too big.
 Did they say that?
 Nose was too big.
 Your eyes are too far apart.
 You need to do something with your hair.
 The whole thing.
 The whole thing.
 And, you know, even at the time that I was being told this,
 it wasn't I was doing an interview with Tracy Ellis Ross for Hulu about black women in hair
 that I was telling her that story.
 Which is a good watch by the way.
 Yes.
 Yes.
 And I was telling her that story, David.
 And she said, wow, that is just such a misogynist, you know, racist thing.
 And I was like, it had never occurred to me.
 You didn't receive it that way.
 I did.
 It never, you know, what I thought it was about me not being pretty enough.
 Hmm.
 I thought.
 And they wouldn't say that to me.
 So you believed it and you thought you was telling the truth?
 Yeah, I thought he was.
 Wow.
 Wow.
 Yeah.
 All right.
 So Mr. Abrams, you end up getting accepted to the school.
 You get bus crossed down.
 And somebody paid your tuition.
 Who did?
 I don't know.
 Do you still don't know today?
 I don't know who paid my tuition.
 And Mr. Abrams did know either when he was on the show in the late 80s.
 I didn't even know there was a tuition.
 I thought it was a, I thought it was a public school.
 I thought it was a public school.
 I wanted to go and he didn't know who paid it.
 Wow.
 I did not know that.
 How are you getting all this?
 Oh, you know, just a little bit of research.
 When did you realize that he had been so fundamental in helping to shape your life?
 It wasn't then.
 When was it that you were like that man?
 Oh, you know, when I realized it, I realized it when I first came to Chicago.
 And I was making more money than I needed.
 Yeah, than I ever dreamed.
 I think I was making like 200 and third.
 I don't remember Gale going, well, that is just a few money.
 That is just like you're making $200,000.
 That's it.
 So I had enough money to, you know, pay my rent and still have money left over.
 And I immediately started thinking about what do I do?
 How do I use this?
 How do I use who I am and what I have this platform?
 And I started, you know, taking young girls out of the project.
 I started.
 So that's when I started thinking about it.
 I thought about what Mr. Abrams had done for me by giving me the opportunity to go to Nicolay.
 I immediately first, you know, I was raised to believe from my grandmother and my father,
 like for whom much is given, much is expected.
 So I live with this.
 Now that you have it, you just can't keep it.
 I was a tither in church.
 You know, do you know what that means?
 Okay.
 Oh, you're so there.
 Okay.
 Catholic.
 Good Catholic.
 Okay.
 So, you know, I grew up with a give 10% give 10% give 10%.
 Yeah.
 So I was like, okay, how do I figure out how to use the 10% or more than 10%.
 How do I use that for something that's bigger and greater than myself?
 And I thought about what Mr. Abrams had done for me, giving me an opportunity.
 And I thought about Mr. Abrams again, when I started my school, I thought about giving kids,
 because me providing a whole school where everything is paid for, which I still do to this day in South Africa,
 was his version of taking me out of.
 Wow.
 Lincoln.
 And putting me.
 That's huge.
 That's huge.
 What I also love is I read that he never tried to stop you from the questions.
 He didn't try and mold you.
 He encouraged you to keep asking.
 But what I wonder is were there other people who thought, my girl is such a pest, she won't shut up.
 Oh, yeah.
 I mean, I was one of those kids who was made fun of for my curiosity.
 And my speaking, because the kids at that age did not think it was cool.
 They did not think it was right.
 And they did not think, you know, just even speaking, you know, having your verbs agree with your subjects was cool.
 Yeah, the diction, all that.
 Yeah.
 All that that with all those things that were important to me as a reader, as a person who reads and also a person who read out loud.
 So I loved reading out loud to myself.
 As Maya always said, poetry should always also specifically be read out loud.
 So having somebody like Mr. Abrams, which I now have a picture of, was fundamental, was just fundamental.
 I think all of us have, I believe in guardian angels, I believe you have ancestors and spiritual guides and all that.
 But I do think that people come in the form of the flesh here on earth to be a part of our life's journey.
 And different people offered different things.
 I have to tell you what this offered to me when I did my research.
 One thing I loved about the Oprah show was no matter how famous you were or how wealthy you were or connected you were.
 You always conducted yourself in a way that made us see something of ourself in you.
 And I remember that note that that woman from Ann Arbor, Michigan wrote you in 1987 where she said, Oprah, seeing you be the best of yourself makes me want to be the best of myself.
 Isn't that my epitaph? Isn't that just it?
 There is nothing better.
 I just feel to this day there's nothing better.
 There is nothing better.
 And so when I read what happened with you and Mr. Abrams in the lunchroom, I saw myself in that not because I'm a voracious reader like you are.
 But because teachers were my refuge, I grew up gay with Tourette's.
 And so if I wasn't being teased for being a freak show because of the Tourette's, I was a fag and a queer and all that.
 And in deep south,
 weren't you a sister to the consciously and so in deep south Louisiana, being gay was worse than being the freak show with my Tourette's.
 And so every day, every day, I would go and take refuge with a teacher who would let me sit in her classroom during lunch.
 And it got to be so much that the teachers would say, David, you can't come in here anymore.
 And so I would go to the next teacher.
 Wow.
 And just ask if they'd let me sit in. They didn't have to talk to me.
 But just and that's where adults became my safe space, my safe place because the playground was not.
 And so in a way, you also were a little bit of a loner in that lunchroom.
 Oh, yeah, very much so.
 And I thought, I'll be damned if I don't see myself in Oprah's pain at that time.
 So I never knew that because I haven't shared a ton of it.
 I never knew that.
 But yes, and Mr. Abrams was actually by refuge.
 I didn't have a classroom to go sit in.
 But every day, he would come and talk to me.
 And I just am stunned to know that he wasn't even a teacher there.
 He was there doing research.
 Well, even their full time.
 What was his research on what?
 That's a good question.
 Yeah.
 You stopped me on that one.
 Okay, here's a great question.
 When did you begin to believe in yourself the way he did?
 Well, I knew that I had the ability to communicate.
 Oh, I tell you what, there was another person who, I don't know if he believed in me, but
 his name is Wentley Fips, who has been a friend of mine now for four decades.
 But Wentley Fips, I was doing something backstage at some event in Baltimore.
 It was like 78.
 And Wentley Fips came up to me.
 He's a wonderful baritone singer.
 And he said, God has impressed me to tell you.
 God has impressed me to tell you that you will be speaking to millions of people.
 In your lifetime.
 And you will have great influence.
 And you will make a difference in people's lives beyond anything you have ever imagined.
 How old were you?
 I was 28.
 So like 1978.
 So I was 74.
 I was 20.
 So 28, right?
 Sometimes that goes to one person's ego.
 No, you didn't go to my ego because I said to him in Baltimore.
 Here, that's going to happen in Baltimore.
 And he goes, God did not tell me where it's going to happen.
 But God has, I mean, when somebody stops you and says, young lady, you may speak to you for a moment.
 Yes, he goes, God has impressed me to tell you.
 And I was like, now that resonated with me because shortly after that, I was doing, I was doing
 this show called people are talking and seen Houston, who was like a psychic, something person,
 said something very similar to me.
 Like you're going to be speaking to millions of people.
 And again, I was like, on the show in Baltimore, I was sick and I happened.
 I don't see it.
 I don't see it happening.
 You never forget people saying stuff like that.
 Yeah.
 I have some favorite Oprah quotes that we're going to get to in a moment.
 Just a couple more questions before we wrap up Mr. Abrams.
 He said that curiosity, curiosity defined you.
 If it defined you, then what defines you now?
 I would say the interest in validating people in their own growth.
 I have real interest in validating people in their own growth.
 That's what defines me.
 That's what gives me tingles all over.
 And there is still this wonder that is in you.
 How do you keep that alive today?
 Because a lot of people would have either burned out or would have said I had a great run.
 But you're still doing meaningful, moving, influential things today.
 Well, I think one of my greatest assets is that I have learned to live in that present moment thing.
 That's not just some woo-woo spiritual talk for me.
 I feel a great sense of wonder and awe and just deep, deep, deep.
 I could start crying right now.
 I feel deep, deep gratitude for the life that I've been able to live.
 I am in constant awe.
 You know, there's this wonderful spiritual that the Hayley Jackson used to sing.
 How I got over, that's going to be at my, that's the last song for me going out.
 How I got over, my soul looks back at wonder, how I got over.
 And many times I'm walking around my property in Montecito and I will look up at the lawn
 or I'll be walking along the road, which is now all graveled and whatever.
 And I think about that dirt red road in Mississippi that I used to walk on.
 And the journey, David, from Mississippi, rural Mississippi,
 no running water, no electricity, outhouse to here, where I am now in my life,
 in that particular space in Montecito.
 But just where I am in my life, the journey from my grandmother's front porch to my front porch
 is, it just leaves me in awe, wonder, and just great gratitude.
 And I often think that it could only happen in the United States of America.
 Well, you've been vocal about how great you think this country is.
 Rapping up a couple of questions.
 There was so much pain in my younger life.
 There was so much pain in your younger life.
 If you could go back and relive that life, would you want to erase that pain?
 No, we're not.
 There's an old song that Maya used to sing. She used to say,
 I wouldn't take nothing for my journey now.
 For my journey now. For my journey now.
 Oh, I wouldn't take nothing for my journey now.
 I wouldn't take nothing for that journey.
 Because every piece of it, even the, you know, sexual abuse,
 the physical abuse, the feeling alone, the feeling isolated,
 the feeling that nobody cared has created a deeper sense of empathy in me for other people.
 I mean, I would not have had the...
 I so agree.
 But wouldn't you agree?
 I so agree.
 You just wouldn't have, I mean, look at the stories that you do around the world here.
 It's why I am where I am today.
 It's why. It's absolutely...
 I didn't graduate from an Ivy League college.
 I didn't have a famous last name.
 Right.
 I had, I turned, I always say, Oprah, I have a,
 I have a bachelor's degree in general studies and a PhD in pain.
 Ooh.
 And that pain is what has allowed me to sit at tables like this one with Oprah Winfrey.
 Oh, my God.
 But isn't it true that nothing is wasted?
 Not a damn thing.
 Not one thing is wasted.
 Not one thing is wasted.
 I would want to replay it again.
 Yeah.
 But I would not erase it because if you erase that, you erase this.
 I know Sydney 48 and I used to have this conversation all the time.
 Oh, I did.
 I love him about how you change one thing.
 You change one thing and you throw the whole thing off course.
 Yeah.
 You change one thing.
 Amen.
 Yeah.
 And so, you know, my being, you know, abused as a kid and all that I endured because of that,
 the secrecy and the, you know, the shame and the feeling of betrayal and all of that has
 really helped me and deepened me as a human being in understanding what that feels like
 for other people.
 And it has brought about compassion in ways that I would never have had it.
 I just wouldn't have had it.
 You just wouldn't have, you wouldn't have known.
 I will tell you what I have to, we're not going to do quotes because you've already heard them.
 You're quotes.
 So I'm going to say to you what I say to everybody.
 Okay, what?
 I was 18 years old.
 I was in my underwear.
 It was Lafayette, Louisiana.
 I was running around the, live your best life season of the Oprah show console.
 Oh.
 And I was a closeted gay kid.
 And so there were jib shots going through the garden and pastel colors and I remember
 thinking myself by myself, this is the gayest shit I ever seen.
 And by the end of the episode, I cried, clapped, jumped up and down and run around in the apartment.
 At at four o'clock every day from that day forward, it became my church.
 It became the place that was safe.
 It became the place where I heard self-help things that I had never heard.
 And it became the place where I saw the window to a world that I wanted to pursue.
 Really?
 So I just want you to know that.
 Oh, my gosh.
 Can you tell me this because I often wonder and I don't know if I've ever had this.
 And if it's improper, then let's take it out.
 But what's it like to know your gay and have to hide that?
 What's it like?
 Are you always wondering somebody is going to see it or think it?
 This is probably going to surprise you.
 I was okay living in the closet for the rest of my life.
 Really?
 Because the dream of being who people thought I couldn't be was more important to me than
 living authentically as a gay man.
 So I was happy to put that away.
 Remember, I had never seen a gay man on national television until Anderson Cooper said I'm gay.
 I had never seen a gay man.
 So I was like, it's okay.
 As long as I can be a story.
 I mean, I dreamed of that.
 I wish to watch the six luck news.
 But you were saying earlier though that kids called you, you know, the worst names.
 All the worst names.
 Yeah.
 So they're calling you those names and you believe that you are gay.
 So do you believe you are the names that they're calling you?
 No.
 No.
 I knew better.
 And I don't know why I didn't go into drugs and alcohol or try to take my own life.
 I just had a sense of belief in myself when nobody believed in me.
 I mean, I was the kid in the corner of the room, which is why when I walk into a room,
 I often gravitate to the person in the corner.
 Yeah.
 Right.
 But for whatever reason, Oprah, I think based on a faith in my family, I knew that I wasn't
 I wasn't what they said.
 Yeah.
 I knew that.
 And I often say if I wrote a book, it would be called How Television Saved for Myself
 because when I wound up on television at 18 years old, the same kids who bullied me,
 their mothers and fathers would come and say, did you see that?
 Bag no boy television.
 Wow.
 He's good.
 And it changed the conversation at school from that Fag to, oh, he's on television.
 And so television for me was a lifesaver before it ever became true journalism.
 It's rescued because it changed the conversation from Fag and Freak Show to, oh, honey, he's
 on TV.
 He's on TV.
 Impressive.
 Yeah.
 I got to finally be impressive.
 What did your family know that you were gay?
 My mother at two years old asked her friends, David walks around in my yellow canary high heel
 shoes.
 Do you think, you know, do you think he's gay and they say, cities, two years old, they're
 bright colored shoes.
 Like, why?
 You know that song by Alabama, the country band called Mama Knows, Mama always knew.
 And I wish I could have opened up to her, but I didn't and it caused a fractured relationship.
 We're close and we're wonderful, but I could never open up to them.
 So I would go home and everything was, I lived a lie.
 Everything was perfect and good.
 How are you doing?
 I'm great.
 I'm great.
 But it was awful and it was tormenting.
 And so what happened was at 18 years old, I had a teacher who said, what are you running
 from?
 What are you running from?
 She looked at me.
 I told her my whole story and she said, that's all fine.
 But you have to change your roadmap because if you keep driving down those same roads, you
 are not going to get out of this fortress that you built around yourself.
 Was she a gay teacher?
 Nope.
 No.
 Stratist can be.
 Stratist can be.
 Wow.
 Interesting.
 Interesting.
 So who was the person who believed in you?
 That person.
 And you know what I heard?
 It's the book you and the doctor wrote.
 What I heard was, in that moment, what I heard was not what's wrong with you.
 Yes.
 I heard her say, what happened to you and then all of a sudden it was like, and it came
 out.
 So, and I don't have any attachment to the pain and the trauma anymore, right?
 Yeah.
 But that trauma ended up becoming my testimony.
 Yeah.
 Ah, yeah.
 That's right.
 You turned that into a testimony.
 I love it.
 So from the bottom of my heart.
 All right.
 Mine to yours.
 Thank you.
 Thank you.
 Thank you.
 Thank you.
 I'm Oprah Winfrey and the person who believed in me was Eugene Abrams.
 This show was created by me, David Begna, our executive producers, our Ellen Rockamora
 and Olivier Delphoss.
 Our associate producer is Griffin Hamilton, our booker is Sully Block.
 Director of photography is Foster Parks.
 Our theme music was created by Slippstream, post-production and edit done by Longwave Digital.
 This podcast was brought to you by our friends at Canva.
 If you're interested in more stories about people doing good in this world, go sign up
 for our free newsletter at www.dogoodcrew.com.