‘What Do I Have to be Grateful For?’: Oprah Winfrey Breaks Down In Tears While Exposing the Painful Struggle to Find Kind Words for Her Mother
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Media mogul Oprah Winfrey recently opened up about her complex relationship with her mother, Vernita Lee, revealing an emotional struggle that continues to affect her decades after achieving worldwide success and amassing billions.
In a powerful episode of “The Oprah Podcast,” where she discusses childhood trauma, the billionaire recalled a moment when she was asked to speak about her mother at a church event. The request brought her face to face with the painful reality of their relationship.
“I remember having to… I was being asked to come to speak about my mother at a church and she was, you know, very not religious. It was important for her to be seen as religious in the community, and I had become ‘Oprah Winfrey’ and everybody knew she was my mother,” Oprah shared, her voice heavy with emotion.
She continued, “I’ve been asked to come to church to just give all these accolades about my mother and I couldn’t think of one thing.”
As she listened to others share their stories, one particular account highlighted the void in her own experience.
“This girl told the story of how her mother would make lunch especially in the rain, she would pack it in a special lunch box and she would put their galoshes with those little yellow boots at the front door and then if you’d be home to take them off,” Winfrey recalled, adding painfully, “I was like, ‘Oh my God, I don’t have one memory, I don’t have one single thing.’”
Born in 1954, Winfrey’s early years were marked by separation from her mother, who moved to Milwaukee for work while leaving her daughter with her grandmother in Mississippi. When Winfrey finally joined her mother at age 6, according to Oprah Daily, their relationship was strained by Lee’s demanding job as a maid and the challenges of single parenthood. The instability of these years would later lead to Winfrey being sent to live with her father in Tennessee during her teenage years.
Fast-forward to when it came time to speak at the church, Winfrey struggled to find words of gratitude.
“I thought well, what do I actually have to be grateful for? She didn’t abort me. She did the best that she knew,” she reflected.
“The best that she knew was not enough to feed what I needed, was not enough to make me feel whole, was not enough to make me feel valued or seen or important to her,” the “Selma” actor said, “It was not, but it was the best that she could do, and I gave up the hope that it could have been anything other than what she had.”
The raw honesty of Winfrey’s revelation resonated deeply with her Instagram audience.
As one commenter noted, “Decades passed. Billions earned. And this still brought her to tears. Parents need to understand and appreciate that what they do and say stays with children FOREVER.”
Another shared, “I need to let go of my resentment towards my mother. Thanks Oprah for your ability to put feelings into words.”
A third one said, “Now that’s a reckoning. Knowing that the best your mama could do for you was give you life.”
Perhaps influenced by her own childhood experiences, Winfrey made the conscious decision not to have children of her own.
“When people were pressuring me to get married and have children, I knew I was not going to be a person that ever regretted not having them,” she told Good Housekeeping U.K. in 2017.
Instead, she found her maternal fulfillment through the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa, where students affectionately call her “Mom O.”
“I wouldn’t have been a good mum for babies. I don’t have the patience,” Winfrey admitted. “Those girls fill that maternal fold that I perhaps would have had. In fact, they overfill — I’m overflowed with maternal.”
Despite the emotional weight of her relationship with her mother, Winfrey eventually worked toward reconciliation before Lee’s passing in 2018. Her journey reflects what one Instagram commenter called “powerful and radical acceptance of what is,” demonstrating that healing is possible even when childhood wounds run deep.
“She couldn’t give what she didn’t have. A hard but powerful truth,” another follower observed, encapsulating the complex reality of mother-daughter relationships that continue to shape lives long after childhood ends.
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