Dear Oprah…

May 20, 2011

Dear Oprah,

Your show is ending next week and so I wanted to write and tell you about the role that you and The Oprah Winfrey Show played in my life.  It was an important one.

I wrote you a letter once. It was a long time ago. It may have been way back when you were just starting out.  You did a show about adoption. Maybe it was one of your early reunion shows.

Whatever aspect of adoption you talked about on that show, it made me decide to write to you.

I remember I chose my writing paper carefully.  It was a lovely, cream-coloured note card, embossed with my name.  I think I picked it because I wanted to look well – classy.

I picked up my favourite pen and I began to write. And Oprah, once I started to write to you about adoption, I couldn’t seem to stop.  I filled the card’s inside space and then I started writing on the back. When the back was full, I started writing on the front where the embossing was.  When the front was full I started writing in the margins.

Now I am a lawyer and I have been the recipient of lots of correspondence in my professional life, both on paper and electronically.  I was well aware as I was writing to you that a letter with little or no white space usually means trouble. It usually means the writer is perhaps less reasoned than one would like them to be  And yet I couldn’t stop myself. I just kept writing and writing.  And when I finally stopped, I mailed it to you.

I didn’t keep a copy of my letter but I can imagine what it said.

It probably said I am a person who gave up a child for adoption. It probably talked about how that felt – not knowing if your child was alive or dead or happy or sad.  Well-loved? It probably said I never forgot.  It probably talked about how I always knew I would find my son one day.

When I wrote that letter to you it was the first time I said those things “out loud.”  It was my first step in leaving the misplaced shame and the carefully-crafted myths of adoption behind.

It was the first step in reclaiming who I really was back from that other person, the one other people, for reasons of their own, wanted me to be.

Many years have passed since I wrote that letter – like Paul Simon sings “Twenty-five years, come and gone.”  Twenty-four years ago this spring, my son and I met.

Deciding to write that letter to you was a very important step in fighting my way out of the adoption closet.  I could tell immediately it felt a lot better being “out” and breathing the fresh air.

For some reason, (Maybe all that missing white space) you never acknowledged my letter.  It doesn’t matter, Oprah.  I want you to know that it’s alright.  I don’t mind.

Over the years, I’ve come to understand, I wasn’t really writing that letter to you.  I was writing to myself.

Thank you for being my catalyst.  I wish you all the best.

Marianne
a.k.a. Unsigned Masterpiece

Oprah’s Favorite Things

I was cruising around itunes the other day and came across Kathy Griffin’s best selling comedy album, For Your Consideration. I listened to a short clip about Oprah. Kathy says she loves Oprah, watches her everyday, but basically thinks she is full of it. I don’t feel as strongly as she does. I watch Oprah on occasion when the subject matter of the show interests me and, I think she does some good things in the world. She and I share a few struggles. But, one show that she does regularly makes me cringe. (Well the show on surrogate mothers in India made me cringe too, as did Oprah’s remark that it was a show about “Women helping women.” but that is another topic for another day.)

The show that always makes me cringe is Oprah’s Favorite Things. Judging by the audiece reaction when they find out they are at the favorite things show, I may be in the minority here. They go nuts. Their eyes light up. They shout and scream. They oooh and awe as each new piece of merchandise is brought out onto the stage. It is this display that really bothers me. I find it – to resort to a very old fashioned word – unseemly. It smells of greed. It smells of a culture based on who can acquire the most stuff. A shallow culture, some might say. A manifestation of the problem right there on your screen, some might say.

Ask Suze Ormand. When she is on Oprah, she says “Americans are going broke buying things they don’t need to impress people they don’t know.” This show feeds right into that. No doubt the companies who provided the merchandise are happy. Getting mentioned on Oprah has got to generate more than a few sales as any publisher will tell you. And you know if I were in the audience, I not sure I wouldn’t just pile the stuff up under my seat along with everyone else and take it home but boy when I watch that Oprah’s favorite things show it makes me feel uneasy, uncomfortable and I have to turn it off. It is not a very attractive display.

I picture those who are not too happy with America right now pointing to this show and saying, “You see, we are right. Look at these people.”

I think I heard Oprah say recently that she wanted to stop doing that kind of show but her staff talked her into it again. Oprah, as a wise woman once said “Listen to your gut.”

Peace

UM