Despite fans' attempt to cancel Oprah Winfrey over "damaging" interviews, she'll always be the go-to of public figures who want to set the record straight about their scandals and personal challenges. Britney Spears even hinted at doing an interview with Winfrey to talk about her family who "should be in jail."
More celebrities, like Adele, have also come to Winfrey's show after that bombshell interview with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. But the host herself isn't a stranger to such tragedies revealed in her program. At the age of 14, Winfrey gave birth to a baby and "never felt like it was" hers. The self-made billionaire described it as the "most traumatic" time in her early life.
Why Did Oprah Winfrey Hide Her Teenage Pregnancy?
Winfrey hid her pregnancy for seven months until she had a premature birth. "I was so ashamed. I hid the pregnancy until my swollen ankles and belly gave me away," she said in her program Life Class. Her detachment also led her to keep the baby. "I saved that baby because I was so disassociated and still do feel such a disassociation. I never felt like it was my baby," she confessed. That shame and detachment also led to darker experiences in her life.
"Hiding that secret and carrying that shame blocked me in so many ways that I remember being taken to the detention home when my mother was going to put me out of the house at the age of 14," she recalled. "The experience was the most emotional, confusing, traumatic of my young life." The pregnancy was also a result of being abused by her relatives, as early as the age of nine.
At one point, Winfrey blamed herself for it. "I'm now for the rest of my life going to be called a 'bad girl,' because I'm going to be put in this place," she said of going to the detention home. "I don't even know how this happened to me that I'm in a place for bad girls because I didn't feel like I was a bad girl." Luckily, she and her mother Vernita Lee were told that there was no space for her there anymore.
Oprah Winfrey's Teenage Pregnancy Became Her Saving Grace
After avoiding the detention home, Winfrey went to live with her father Vernon Winfrey. From then on, the Cecil B. DeMille awardee began to feel like she got a second chance in life. "From that moment forward, I felt like I had been somehow saved, that somebody up there recognized that I wasn't a bad girl," she remembered. "And here I was given another chance, and after I gave birth, at 14 years old to a child who I never even knew how this even happened to me at the time."
Winfrey had a tough time dealing with the death of her premature baby. However, her father told her that she should look forward to her future. "When that child died, my father said to me, 'This is your second chance. This is your opportunity to cease this moment and make something of your life,'" she said. "I took that chance and understood for myself, that now I know better so I can do better."
How Was Oprah Winfrey's Teenage Pregnancy Later Leaked To The Press?
As Winfrey became a famous talk show host, the secret started to haunt her again. Eventually, the whole world found out about it. A publication had paid her half-sister Patricia Lloyd — whom she described as a "drug-dependent, deeply disturbed individual." — to spill the story. Winfrey was afraid that it would ruin her career. "I carried the secret into my future, always afraid that if anyone discovered what had happened, they, too, would expel me from their lives," she said.
The Path Made Clear author recalled it being a depressing time for her. "I took to my bed and cried for three days. I felt devastated. Wounded. Betrayed. How could this person do this to me," she said of the ordeal. "I remember (boyfriend) Stedman (Graham) coming into the bedroom that Sunday afternoon, the room darkened from the closed curtains. Standing before me, looking like he, too, had shed tears, he handed me the tabloid and said, 'I'm so sorry. You don't deserve this.'"
Soon, she realized that it was time she addressed the story herself. "I soon realized that having the secret out was liberating … What I learned for sure was that holding the shame was the greatest burden of all," she said. About not having any biological children, Winfrey said she has zero regrets. The members of her Academy for Girls are enough for her. "Those girls fill that maternal fold that I perhaps would have had. They overfill – I'm overflowed with maternal," she said.