Oprah Winfrey has always been transparent about her humble beginnings and has shared many a story through her years as host of The Oprah Winfrey Show.
While she’s shared her own story, it’s not often that the 63 year-old media mogul has spoken about those tough times in interviews.
During a recent Hollywood Reporter podcast, Winfrey opens up about being molested by relatives and later becoming pregnant at 14 by her uncle.? She also discusses her career path and reveals that she made a lot of mistakes to get to where she is today.
Details + listen to full interview below…
Winfrey states:
“I hit rock-bottom,” says Winfrey of her time growing up with her mother in Milwaukee.
“I became pregnant and hid the pregnancy. I?d intended to kill myself actually. I thought there?s no way other than killing myself. I was just planning on how to do it. If I’d had the Internet, I might not be alive because now you can just Google how to do it.”
Winfrey says she ended up having a miscarriage, which her father called a “second chance” for her. She says she took in those words as a mantra throughout her life and that helped her reach the level of success she’s at today, which includes the establishment of her own network.
I was, in many ways, saved by that, and I made a decision that I was going to turn it around.
When discussing the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), the media mogul admits she learned from her early mistakes:
I, in the beginning, made a lot of mistakes. I made the wrong choices. And I have to this day gone over and over in mind, ‘Should I have waited ’til I completely ended The Oprah Winfrey Show?’ Yes. That would be the answer, because I needed to be there.
This whole idea that you can start something from scratch that carries your name and bears your brand…and not be there for daily input and expect other people to get that is…it’s just a false notion.
So now I know that….
The turnaround came when I had my own come-to-Jesus meeting with myself…. ‘Stop looking at this as a problem that you’ve created and look at it for the opportunity that it is. How many people in their lifetime get an opportunity to have a platform ? call it whatever you will, a network ? that has their name on it?
Oprah is my hero and y’all bettnot say NOTHING bad about her…