A Weekend With Oprah: ‘She Touched the Hearts of the World’

• Tweet

• Tweet

She was larger than life.

Amid the buildings that shoot up into the sky, dwarfing pedestrians who make their way around the maze, there she was — Oprah Winfrey.

The talk show queen draped the Gotham building as a giant poster.

A line of hundreds of fans snake around the Avenue of Americas. Mothers and daughters. Couples. Students. Teachers. Young professionals. They all showed up for the welcome cocktail party to kick off the weekend celebrating O Magazine’s 10th anniversary in New York City.

Thousands had temporarily left the rat race of life – from Canada, the U.S., Hong Kong, Ecuador, Australia and Israel - to find inspiration from one of the world’s most influential and famous people to live their best life.

A year before the end of Oprah’s iconic talk show, which aired for the final time on May 25 after 25 years on the air,  starry-eyed fans of all ages and backgrounds got a glimpse of the phenomenon behind her global influence. The Live Your Best Life Weekend (LYBL) in May of last year celebrated O Magazine’s 10th anniversary.

“She sets an example to be the best person you could be,” said Ann Ellis, a teacher from Kincardine, Ont., during the welcome cocktails at Gotham building. Mingling among likeminded fans amid the luminescent lavender curtains and sparkling chandeliers, Ellis came with a group of teachers, dressed in elegant pant suits, to check off one of the items on their bucket list of things they wanted to do before they die.

She and her friends have been trying to get tickets to the Oprah show for years, and finally got a chance to see Winfrey in person through the LYBL weekend at about $400 per ticket. Hooked on The Oprah Winfrey Show for 10 years, they would tape it if they missed an episode.

“You have to live each day to the fullest. You don’t want to put something off till retirement,” Ellis added, before going off  to enjoy the strawberry cocktails, wine and classic New York hors’ d’oeuvres of mini frankfurters and chop suey. “She has had real-life experiences that a lot of us can relate to and she’s worked to get to where she is.”

Amid a Sea of Green Tote Bags, An Inspiring Role Model

The next day, a sea of green O tote bags (gifts for participants) fills the enormous Javits Center by the Hudson River, where Oprah and her O Magazine contributors delivered speeches.

Giant posters of Oprah and the Live Your Best Life Weekend and electronic ticker signs with inspiring quotes greet them as they pass security, approach the wall of fuchsia roses and enter the auditorium, reminiscent of an airport hangar, where Winfrey would make her first appearance.

“Failure is a signpost to turn you in another direction.” -Oprah

“The only courage you ever need is the courage to live your heart’s desire.” -Oprah

“Love yourself then learn to extend that love to others.” -Oprah

With the only empty seats left at the back and more fans arriving, the positive energy, and anticipation, were palpable. Then, she appeared in a bright sunflower-coloured top. For the fans, she was an image of radiance, confidence and pure inspiration.

She repeated her message of self-empowerment, loving yourself first so you could spread the love to others. Having a sense of purpose greater than yourself. Living in the present so you could experience true joy.

“My main message is, You must fill your own cup first, so your life will overflow into the life of others,” Winfrey tells the rapt audience as she took the stage illuminated with glowing dots, reminiscent of the darkened sky with a necklace of stars.

Eat, Pray, Love author, Elizabeth Gilbert, was among the famous speakers who echo her message during the event.

“I get up every day and do my very best with who I am and what I lack,” Gilbert told the audience. “I want to live my best life. That’s why we worship at the altar of Oprah.”

Gilbert emphasized “self-forgiveness,” speaking with candor about her foibles. She shared her humorous story of how she missed her flight to an important paid speaking engagement — ironically about how to pull your life together, she explained sheepishly. However, despite her bad luck, she had managed to make it, albeit messy, flustered and frustrated. “Your life begins when you drop the knife to your own neck,” she told the crowd. “Be very good to yourselves. You are all beautiful.”

Inspiring Strength and Purpose Amid Hardships

Winfrey’s fans at the event, mostly women from their teens to middle age, share their hopes, dreams and desires to live and love more fully, and make a positive difference.

“About three years ago I went through a horrible, horrible breakup,” said Tiffany Gordon, 26, who shared how Winfrey, through her talk show, had helped her through her heartbreak. “I was sitting on the couch and I had a ‘aha moment’ – to love myself.”

She spoke about Winfrey as if she had been there personally for her, guiding her through the breakup and helping her pick herself back up and be stronger. She was referring to Winfrey’s oft-used phrase, “aha! moment,” in her magazine’s monthly column.

Gordon, a pretty and soft-spoken New Yorker who resembles a younger Winfrey, was confidently mugging for photos during one of the workshops with Donna Brazile, a star legal analyst, CNN commentator and Barack Obama’s friend. “For a young woman . . .  once you know your worth, the possibilities are endless,” she said.

Keeping Her Promise to Nelson Mandela

Though not a mother herself, Winfrey has influenced mothers themselves to be better parents.

“Some people ask me why I never had children,” Oprah said in an interview with CNN in 2006 during the gathering of the first class of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy in South Africa, a school inspired by former South African President Nelson Mandela. “Maybe this is the reason. So I can help bring up other peoples’ children, your children. I want you to trust me to bring up your children and I promise I’ll never let you down.”

Terri Reilly, an interior designer from Connecticut and mother of four children, recognizes some may snicker or find the saccharine messages and awe surrounding Winfrey to be cult-like.

“Oprah is a very influential person – in a positive way,” said Reilly, who has been a fan for 25 years. “And if people want to think it’s a cult, it’s one damn good cult.”

Unlike a cult or unhealthy fixations on celebrities, she said Oprah fans have free will to do what they wanted, and Oprah’s purpose wasn’t for herself but for people to realize their best life and their higher purpose.

“She’s real and authentic,” she added. “I found it (the Live Your Best Life weekend) very uplifting.”

To Olive Oluck, an image consultant and personal shopper in New York City, the event was a great way to connect with people and bring them all together.

“She’s an amazing person. I think she’s just a warm, giving and kind person, a humanitarian,” Oluck said. “She really wants to make the world a better place. She’s a most profound person — I think she’s so inspiring.”

Sharing Her Remarkable Story

Standing before the packed Radio City Music Hall, Winfrey shared the remarkable story of her life with the LYBL audience. At times with hands on her hips, exuding her natural confidence and self-assuredness in her shimmery white and saffron dress, she spoke of her rise from adversity, from being abused as a child, raped at the age of 9 and having a still born baby at 14,  to discovering her gift of communication in her teens. As they showed a black and white picture of her and her grandmother on the porch, she recounts how her grandmother back in Tennessee had assumed she would become a maid, and her dreams would stop there. After she had entered a beauty contest and was discovered for her on-air ability, she got a job at a TV station . . . and her destiny was sealed.

Giving the ‘Gift of Chance’

Amid the mainly female audience of fans, a young man could be heard sniffling.

The “gift of chance” moved Marcos Brinson to tears.

He soon burst into cheers and clapped when a video clip showed Oprah Winfrey pleasantly surprising one of the African school girls with news that she would pay for her college education.

“I really was moved because Oprah gave the girl the gift of chance,” said Brinson, 29, a singer and songwriter from New Jersey, at Radio City Music Hall. “She was given the opportunity to better her life.” (Read more about how Oprah inspired a dream, a song and a “gift of chance.”)

Patti Tahan, a real estate manager from New Jersey, slipped into the empty seat near Brinson. He and Tahan remarked how it was a good thing they ended up sitting next to one another, and perhaps they were meant to cross paths. They encouraged each other about not letting fear and other people’s negative opinions hold you back from doing what your heart desires, for pursuing greatness instead of staying in the safety of mediocrity.

As an Oprah fan for 25 years, Tahan said she can relate to Winfrey. “We both pulled ourselves up out of tough situations growing up,” said the mother of three daughters who are all Oprah fans. “My daughters are my best friends. . . . We discuss her shows and sometimes even stay up late to watch the late night reruns over the phone!”

Growing up poor and with a sick father, Tahan had the responsibility of raising her 13-year-old brother after her parents passed away by the time she was 19 years old.

“My life, after that, was still filled with struggle,” she said, noting her battle with weight issues. “I knew I had to take charge of my life.  I became a successful manager of a large real-estate office. I have provided for my family in a way I never would have thought possible.  My four children all have college educations and have the drive to make life better for themselves and those around them.  I am always striving for more and better in my life!  I always encourage those around me to strive for more, too.”

Growing Up With Oprah

On a chilly Sunday, the crowd gathered near the Hudson River at 7 a.m. for the final event: the Live Your Best Life walk. They waited. And waited. For an hour and a half. Winfrey was late.

People began to get antsy. “Walk, walk, walk,” they urged before Winfrey had finally appeared. She had bags under her eyes. Apparently, there was an after-party last night, the likely culprit, which her silky smooth makeup couldn’t hide. Still, she was glowing and ethereal, with the self-assuredness that draws so many to admire her as their role model.

“This is our bucket list so being here is a dream — to be able to support everything she (Oprah) stands for,” said Joyce Hughes, a school bus driver from New Jersey with roots in Montreal, who came with her best friend of 25 years, Adriana Lefkowitz.

Both women were rewarding themselves for living their best life and celebrating their friendship that weekend. They have watched Oprah since she began her talk show in 1985, as they became mothers and watched their children grow up and go off to college and successful careers. Hughes proudly spoke of her three daughters who were the first to go to college and graduate in both her and her husband’s families.

“We grew up with her for 25 years,” Hughes said. “She doesn’t know us, but we know her. . . . We can identify with her struggles and her accomplishments.”

“She reminds us what’s important,” added her best friend Lefkowitz, a holistic nutritionist from New Jersey. “She keeps people grounded.”

“She’s an example of a person with good values so people strive to be that,” said Hughes, who is inspired by Oprah to also set a good example for her children.

‘Thankful Every Day for Breathing’

Whenever Hughes faced challenges such as the empty nest syndrome of seeing her three daughters leave home to go to college, she would be reminded of Oprah’s courageous guests who faced even greater hardships — and became stronger, living life the best they could.

At the same time fans were encouraged to discover their authentic selves and reach their potential during the LYBL weekend, they were bombarded by advertisements promising to better their lives with products such as anti-wrinkle cream, mascara and lip-plumping gloss. Though the products seemed against Winfrey’s message of self-acceptance, the talk show icon herself once had asked why they had to have so many ads in the magazine, but she recognized they needed them to keep the business afloat.

Nonetheless, Hughes said Oprah isn’t the typical celebrity that only cares about promoting his or her career, and “gets a blackeye” in the public — she’s a good role model who touched the lives and hearts of the world. “She did things besides sell a product,” Hughes said. “She did things that changed the world and made it a better place. It’s a tough act to follow.”

As the crowd began their walk, Hughes snatched one of the giant purple balloons, and Lefkowitz followed suit, walking proudly, with child-like abandon, through New York City’s unusually quiet streets that Sunday. They were trailed by the whimsical giant bobbing balloons, encouraged by volunteers, and teen cheerleading squads miming Winfrey’s “you can do it!” mantra. They finally reached the confetti-laden finish at Times Square, celebrating the end of the weekend with Winfrey’s quick appearance with her celebrity posse, including Oscar-winning actress and singer Jennifer Hudson.

“It was a good reminder to be thankful every day for breathing,” Hughes said of the weekend with Oprah and her fans. “There’s going to be no one that’s going to replace Oprah. There’s only one Oprah. Oprah stands on a league of her own and I truly believe she’s going to leave a legacy.”

* * * * *

How has Oprah redefined the definition of celebrity? How did she and her iconic show have an impact on your life? What do you think Oprah’s legacy is for mothers, fathers, families, educators and youth? Share your thoughts and reflections in the Comments section below.

Related posts: