In a program taped a day earlier at Oprah’s Harpo Studios in Chicago, Winfrey took to the stage and, in what has become almost a mantra over a quarter-century, urged her audience to follow their dreams.
“Start embracing the life that is calling you and use that life to serve the world,” Winfrey said in the show being broadcast across millions of US homes.
She said she had initially seen the show as a job, but then it morphed into something else. “Something in me connected with each of you in a way that allowed me to see myself in you and you in me. I listened and grew and I know you grew along with me.” If she had one regret it was that she had not been able to focus more attention on the issue of the sexual abuse of children, Winfrey said.
“People ask if I have regrets,” she said. “I have none really about the show, but the one thing I feel I was not able to bring attention to even though I tried in 217 shows was the sexual molestation and rape of children. Worse now with the Internet than when I first spoke of it in November 1986.”Breaking down many taboos, Winfrey has herself talked openly about being abused as a child, after being born into a life of poverty in Mississippi.
