Refuse to Lose by Adell J. Harris

Author:Adell J. Harris
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 2019-04-12T20:37:50+00:00

My Greatest Model: Oprah Winfrey

To me, Oprah is like the Internet. The Internet has completely transformed our world, and it’s going to be the catalyst for many new developments in the next one hundred years. It has transcended its original roots to become something infinitely powerful. Oprah is a force in our world like that.

Oprah’s introduction into my life was one of my greatest watershed moments. There was before Oprah, and then there is after Oprah. Oprah came into my life at a time when I needed exactly that kind of influence, and she has been a huge, key component to my success and growth as a person. I’ve watched hours upon hours of her truth and her story. She was the answer to all the questions I didn’t even know I had.

I cannot emphasize enough how revolutionary and courageous Oprah was to simply be and share herself in the public sphere. Oprah was one of the first people on TV to express unfiltered vulnerability. She talked openly about sexual abuse and adversity at a time when these unspoken wounds were normally swept under the rug. Before I heard Oprah put into words what sexual abuse does to a person, I felt like there was something wrong with me. I felt ashamed and guilty of the sexual abuse I’d suffered, and I felt like my resulting behavior was my fault. But then Oprah told me that sexual abuse causes people to act out in certain ways, like adopting promiscuous behavior and feeling shame and guilt.

Oprah helped me realize why I thought, felt, and acted the way I did, and her life was proof that there was a way through the adversity—a way to shed the old, limiting beliefs and come out the other side stronger.

I was drawn strongly to Oprah because my story aligns with hers in many ways. We’re both black women. We both suffered sexual abuse at the age of eight and, because of it, didn’t learn healthy views of sex growing up. We both had strained relationships with our mothers, feeling angry at them for not protecting us and for not being more loving and nurturing. We both found solace in our faith. When someone asked Oprah what gave her hope throughout her struggles, Oprah said that she believed God’s Word that she could do all things through Christ who strengthened her. I had heard that scripture plenty of times growing up, and it had also been a beacon of hope for me.

James Baldwin said, “If you can examine and face your life, you can discover the terms with which you are connected to other lives, and they can discover them too. You read something which you thought only happened to you, and you discovered it happened 100 years ago to Dostoyevsky. This is a very great liberation for the suffering, struggling person, who always thinks they’re alone.”5 That was what Oprah did for me—she showed me that I was not alone.

I was also able to look

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