If you could look back at everything you’ve been through in your life and give your teenage self some advice, what would you say? Inside next month’s ‘O’ magazine, Oprah Winfrey included a letter she penned to her 19-year-old self, a teenager she calls a “beautiful brown-skinned girl” who was dating some guy named Bubba and had just snagged a job as a television reporter in Chicago. She tells her younger self that in order to grow, she has to admit that the abuse of the past has changed the way she looks at herself. She also tells her younger self to hold onto her beliefs because that’s her greatest gift and that she must see herself through her own eyes and not the expectations of others:
Dear beautiful brown-skinned girl,
I look into your eyes and see the light and hope of myself.
In this photo you are just about to turn 20, posing outside the television station where you were recently hired as a reporter. You’re proud of yourself for getting the job, but uncertain you’ll be able to manage all your college classes before 1 and arrive at the station by 1:30 for a full day’s work. Even so, your biggest concern is how to manage your love life with Bubba. Yes, you are dating someone named Bubba.
On this day you’ve brought him to the station to see where you work, hoping he’ll be proud, too.
He seems less than impressed. The truth is, he’s intimidated. You don’t know this, though, because you can see yourself only through his eyes. A lesson you will have to learn again and again: to see yourself with your own eyes, to love yourself from your own heart.
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I look into your eyes and see the light and hope of myself.
In this photo you are just about to turn 20, posing outside the television station where you were recently hired as a reporter. You’re proud of yourself for getting the job, but uncertain you’ll be able to manage all your college classes before 1 and arrive at the station by 1:30 for a full day’s work. Even so, your biggest concern is how to manage your love life with Bubba. Yes, you are dating someone named Bubba.
On this day you’ve brought him to the station to see where you work, hoping he’ll be proud, too.
He seems less than impressed. The truth is, he’s intimidated. You don’t know this, though, because you can see yourself only through his eyes. A lesson you will have to learn again and again: to see yourself with your own eyes, to love yourself from your own heart.
