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The Nicest Thing a Mother (or Anybody) Can SayPosted: Wed 05/08/2013 08:00 AM
 Photo: Dwight Carter In her new memoir Mom & Me & Mom, Dr. Maya Angelou explains how she reconnected with the mother who abandoned
her during her childhood, but who came to be a strong, vital force in
her adult life. Read this Oprah.com excerpt and watch Oprah's conversation with Dr. Angelou Sunday at 11 a.m. ET/PT on OWN and online.
By the time I was
twenty-two, I was living in San Francisco. I had a five-year-old son,
two jobs, and two rented rooms, with cooking privileges down the hall.
My landlady, Mrs. Jefferson, was kind and grandmotherly. She was a ready
babysitter and insisted on providing dinner for her tenants. Her ways
were so tender and her personality so sweet that no one was mean enough
to discourage her disastrous culinary exploits. Spaghetti at her table,
which was offered at least three times a week, was a mysterious red,
white, and brown concoction. We would occasionally encounter an
unidentifiable piece of meat hidden among the pasta. There was no money
in my budget for restaurant food, so I and my son, Guy, were always
loyal, if often unhappy, diners at Chez Jefferson.
My mother had moved into another large Victorian house, on Fulton Street, which she again filled with Gothic, heavily carved furniture. The upholstery on the sofa and occasional chairs was red-wine-colored mohair. Oriental rugs were placed throughout the house. She had a live-in employee, Poppa, who cleaned the house and sometimes filled in as cook helper. Mother picked up Guy twice a week and took him to her house, where she fed him peaches and cream and hot dogs, but I only went to Fulton Street once a month and at an agreed-upon time. She understood and encouraged my self-reliance and I looked forward eagerly to our standing appointment. On the occasion, she would cook one of my favorite dishes. One lunch date stands out in my mind. I call it Vivian's Red Rice Day. When I arrived at the Fulton Street house my mother was dressed beautifully. Her makeup was perfect and she wore good jewelry. After we embraced, I washed my hands and we walked through her formal, dark dining room and into the large, bright kitchen. Much of lunch was already on the kitchen table. Vivian Baxter was very serious about her delicious meals. On that long-ago Red Rice Day, my mother had offered me a crispy, dry-roasted capon, no dressing or gravy, and a simple lettuce salad, no tomatoes or cucumbers. A wide-mouthed bowl covered with a platter sat next to her plate. She fervently blessed the food with a brief prayer and put her left hand on the platter and her right on the bowl. She turned the dishes over and gently loosened the bowl from its contents and revealed a tall mound of glistening red rice (my favorite food in the entire world) decorated with finely minced parsley and green stalks of scallions. The chicken and salad do not feature so prominently in my tastebuds' memory, but each grain of red rice is emblazoned on the surface of my tongue forever. Next: The kind words she'll never forget Dr. Maya Angelou to Oprah: Stop Crying and Say Thank You!Posted: Tue 05/07/2013 12:00 AM
Last summer, Oprah wrote a note thanking one person she can always count on in her most fearful moments—Dr. Maya Angelou.
"Years ago I phoned her complaining about what I've now long forgotten," Oprah wrote. "She shared these words, 'Courage is the most important of all the virtues, without it, you can practice no other.' It takes courage to be kind when others are not. It takes courage to be truthful when a lie might suffice. It takes courage to keep moving forward, when you'd rather quit. I've learned that courage, or opting for bravery, is feeling the fear and still doing what is necessary to overcome it. And in the very act of bravery you don't feel brave but just feel what is true and most real." In this vintage clip from The Oprah Winfrey Show, Oprah and Dr. Angelou discuss one of Oprah's most desolate moments and how Dr. Angelou helped her get through it. Get the advice Dr. Angelou shared with Oprah that day and practice it in your own life. Watch the first of Oprah's two-part interview with Dr. Maya Angelou this Sunday at 11 a.m ET/PT on OWN. You can also join our worldwide simulcast at Oprah.com, Facebook.com/SuperSoulSunday or Facebook.com/OWNTV. Dr. Maya Angelou: My Greatest Blessing Is My SonPosted: Mon 05/06/2013 05:30 PM
This Mother's Day, Dr. Maya Angelou is opening up to Oprah about the biggest blessing she's ever received—her son, Guy Johnson. Watch as Dr. Angelou speaks about motherhood and why she also considers others her children, including Oprah. Watch the first of Oprah's two-part interview with Dr. Maya Angelou this Sunday at 11 a.m ET/PT on OWN. You can also join our worldwide simulcast at Oprah.com, Facebook.com/SuperSoulSunday or Facebook.com/OWNTV. Dr. Brené Brown: The Wholehearted Parenting ManifestoPosted: Fri 05/03/2013 12:00 AM
In her book, Daring Greatly, Dr. Brown shares a wholehearted parenting manifesto that moves Oprah to tears in their all-new interview this Sunday. (Watch on OWN or online at 11 a.m. ET/PT.) Whether you're a parent—or hope to be one day—read this declaration of love and take charge of the energy you're bringing to the ones you love most. Then, click here to print a copy for your home or to share with others! The Wholehearted Parenting Manifesto Above all else, I want you to know that you are loved and loveable. You will learn this from my words and actions—the lessons on love are in how I treat you and how I treat myself. I want you to engage with the world from a place of worthiness. You will learn that you are worthy of love, belonging, and joy every time you see me practice self-compassion and embrace my own imperfections. We will practice courage in our family by showing up, letting ourselves be seen, and honoring vulnerability. We will share our stories of struggle and strength. There will always be room in our home for both. We will teach you compassion by practicing compassion with ourselves first; then with each other. We will set and respect boundaries; we will honor hard work, hope, and perseverance. Rest and play will be family values, as well as family practices. You will learn accountability and respect by watching me make mistakes and make amends, and by watching how I ask for what I need and talk about how I feel. I want you to know joy, so together we will practice gratitude. I want you to feel joy, so together we will learn how to be vulnerable. When uncertainty and scarcity visit, you will be able to draw from the spirit that is a part of our everyday life. Together we will cry and face fear and grief. I will want to take away your pain, but instead I will sit with you and teach you how to feel it. We will laugh and sing and dance and create. We will always have permission to be ourselves with each other. No matter what, you will always belong here. As you begin your Wholehearted journey, the greatest gift that I can give to you is to live and love with my whole heart and to dare greatly. I will not teach or love or show you anything perfectly, but I will let you see me, and I will always hold sacred the gift of seeing you. Truly, deeply, seeing you. Reprinted from Daring Greatly by Brené Brown by arrangement with Gotham Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., Copyright (c) 2012. 4 (Totally Surprising) Life Lessons We All Need to LearnPosted: Wed 05/01/2013 12:00 AM
 Photo: Danny Clark As unique as we all are, an awful lot of us want the same things. We want to shake up our current less-than-fulfilling lives. We want to be happier, more loving, forgiving and connected with the people around us. So...we make decisions ("I'm going to hang out with happy people!"); we give ourselves lectures ("If you'd just stop feeling guilty, you'd able to do what you want); and we strive for markers of that accomplishment ("Just go to the completely intimidating party and meet one person!"). Brené Brown, PhD, LMSW, author of The Gifts of Imperfection and Daring Greatly and research professor at the University of Houston, has spent the last 12 years figuring out what keeps us from living—despite our best efforts—the kind of wholehearted, fully involved existences that we're trying to lead. It turns out that a lot of the assumptions we hold so dear and we believe will turn around everything are...well...just plain wrong. Read on to find out why! Then, tune in Sunday at 11 a.m. ET/PT for her all-new interview with Oprah. Watch only on OWN. 1. Fitting In Is Not Belonging There are so many terms we use every day whose meanings are gauzy, if not downright imprecise—which makes it hard to get your head around what's really going on in your life. For example, contrary to what most of us think: Belonging is not fitting in. In fact, fitting in is the greatest barrier to belonging. Fitting in, I've discovered during the past decade of research, is assessing situations and groups of people, then twisting yourself into a human pretzel in order to get them to let you hang out with them. Belonging is something else entirely—it's showing up and letting yourself be seen and known as you really are—love of gourd painting, intense fear of public speaking and all. Many us suffer from this split between who we are and who we present to the world in order to be accepted, (Take it from me: I'm an expert fitter-inner!) But we're not letting ourselves be known, and this kind of incongruent living is soul-sucking. In my research, I've interviewed a lot of people who never fit in, who are what you might call "different": scientists, artists, thinkers. And if you drop down deep into their work and who they are, there is a tremendous amount of self-acceptance. Some of them have to scrap for it, like the rest of us, but most are like this neurophysicist I met who, essentially, told me, "My parents didn't care that I wasn't on the football team, and my parents didn't care that I was awkward and geeky. I was in a group of kids at school who translated books into the Klingon language. And my parents were like, ‘Awesome!' They took me to the Star Trek convention!" He got his sense of belonging from his parents' sense of belonging, and even if we don't get that from Mom and Dad, we have to create it for ourselves as adults—or we will always feel as if we're standing outside of the big human party. The truth is: Belonging starts with self-acceptance. Your level of belonging, in fact, can never be greater than your level of self-acceptance, because believing that you're enough is what gives you the courage to be authentic, vulnerable and imperfect. When we don't have that, we shape-shift and turn into chameleons; we hustle for the worthiness we already possess. 
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