Oprah Winfrey lives Aquarius’s urge to self-improvement 

By Anne M. Nordhaus-Bike 

Over the course of every year, the Sun travels through all 12 signs of the zodiac, one month at a time. So every month we have the opportunity to experience a different astrological energy, observe how its positives and negatives unfold in our lives, and integrate what we learn to achieve a new level of personal harmony. One way to make the most of this cyclical energy is to study the lives of public figures born under the sign the Sun currently occupies. Besides learning from their mistakes, we can take heart from how they overcome challenges and take inspiration from how they express the noblest aspects of their Sun signs.

            Oprah Winfrey was born Orpah Gail Winfrey on Jan. 29, 1954, in Kosciusko, MS. Her unmarried teen parents named her for a woman in the Old Testament book of Ruth, but when others transposed the second and third letters of the infant’s name, she became known as Oprah. Her maternal grandmother raised her on a pig farm that lacked electricity and running water, and while she endured old fashioned corporal punishment for any infraction, she learned to read before she turned three.

            After turning six, she lived with her mother and half-brothers in a Milwaukee slum. Starting at age nine, male relatives and a family acquaintance raped her repeatedly until she was 14. Despite the trauma, Winfrey’s high intelligence shone at school, where she skipped kindergarten and second grade and later won a scholarship to a suburban high school. As a young teen, however, she rebelled via drugs, promiscuous sex, and petty crime. She became pregnant at 14 and gave birth prematurely to a son who died shortly thereafter.

Winfrey turned her life around after going to live with her father and his wife in Nashville, thriving under that couple’s strict rules and high standards. Her father insisted she read constantly and write regular reports on what she had read. Her efforts paid off when she made the honor roll, was chosen her school’s Most Popular Girl, won beauty pageants, and aced an oratory contest that earned her a full college scholarship.

            After working radio and TV jobs in Nashville, she moved to Baltimore in 1976 to co-anchor a television news program but soon moved on to co-hosting a talk show. In 1984, she moved to Chicago to host WLS-TV’s struggling morning program, AM Chicago; within a month, it became the city’s talk show champ, outstripping longtime local ratings leader Phil Donohue’s show. The next year, the station rewarded her by renaming the program The Oprah Winfrey Show and increasing its air time to one hour. Her celebrity jumped that year when she co-starred in the film version of The Color Purple.

In 1986, she became a millionaire when she negotiated a lucrative syndication deal that made her America’s top talk show host. She also became a business and production powerhouse when she founded Harpo Inc. That same year, she met her longtime partner, businessman Stedman Graham, Jr. In 1988, she opened Harpo Studios on the Near West Side in a former ice rink at 110 N. Carpenter St., and in 1989 she opened a restaurant with the quintessentially Aquarian name of The Eccentric, which closed in 1995.

            In her early days, Winfrey expressed Aquarius’s trademark attraction to all that is new and strange by welcoming quirky guests and tackling tabloid topics. She also revolutionized the talk format by speaking to guests as a friend rather than a reporter, using her sharp mind to ad lib instead of relying on a script, and daring to reveal her own vulnerabilities as guests spilled out their secrets. Along the way, she broke cultural taboos about race, sexuality, and other subjects and made marginalized people and ideas mainstream.

            In the mid-1990s, she rejected tabloid TV’s increasingly freakish antics when she began focusing on serious issues, self-help, and spirituality. As part of this shift, she started the enormously influential Oprah’s Book Club, launched O, The Oprah Magazine, co-wrote several books, started her own website, began producing movies and television shows through Harpo, and helped found the Oxygen cable TV network. She also pushed for a national database of convicted child molesters, spotlighted health and fitness by running a marathon to mark her 40th birthday, and focused her charitable giving on education and empowering women and children.

More recently, she started a second magazine, launched a satellite radio channel, and produced the Broadway musical version of The Color Purple. Meanwhile, her show, broadcast in 137 countries to 46 million viewers each week, has been extended through the 2010-2011 season. Her accomplishments have garnered her numerous awards, made her show TV’s highest rated talk program ever, and made Winfrey a billionaire. Next year, she will outdo even herself when she starts her own TV network.

            With her vast earnings, Winfrey has bought several houses throughout the U.S. She also has showered riches on others with jaw-dropping giveaways of cars and luxury goods to her talk show audiences and a trip to Hawaii for more than 1,000 people to thank her staff and their families. She has opened her heart and her checkbook to the world’s poor with unprecedented levels of charity, which she took to a new level last year when she established a 28-building campus in South Africa that houses the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls. She also has enlisted her fans around the globe to help nonprofit organizations worldwide by giving to Oprah’s Angel Network, which has raised more than $50 million.

 

Living Aquarius’s gift for communication, humanitarianism

Winfrey’s life exemplifies the gifts Aquarius bestows and this sign’s drive to use them in service to humanity. As a toddler, she began tapping her communication talents and nimble mind when she won acclaim at church for reciting and interpreting Bible verses; she later excelled in school and at public speaking. By age 12, when she won $500 in a speech contest, she knew she wanted to make her living using her considerable abilities.

Aquarius enjoys glamour—particularly in entertainment and media—making this sign the ruler of radio and television broadcasting, computers, and the Internet. Winfrey has found success in all these media. For example, while still in high school, she landed a part-time job as a radio reporter, and while she was at Tennessee State University she became the youngest news anchor in her local TV station’s history as well as its first black female anchor. She went on to become a billionaire businesswoman heading a unique multimedia empire that gives her a glamorous life in the spotlight and the means and media know-how to create productions for theatre, television, and film.

Aquarius’s airy aspect has given Winfrey a lifelong love of reading; deep devotion to education in both her work and charitable efforts; and a love of ideas, discussion, debate, and interacting with diverse people. It also has allowed her to succeed in the demanding talk show format, which requires concentration, an ability to respond appropriately in the moment, and the mental toughness to handle challenging topics and unpredictable people.

Like the zodiac’s other fixed signs, Aquarius loves to help others by “fixing” them. Symbolized by the Water Bearer, which pours out wisdom like water from a jar, Aquarius typically helps by sharing information and advocating an ideal. Winfrey hit her stride in the talk format, helping others by introducing new ideas, giving ordinary people exposure, trumpeting celebrities’ good deeds, and championing society’s underdogs. Along the way, she has taken millions along with her on her lifelong journey of personal discovery and self-improvement. Today, every component of her business contributes to her dream of educating and uplifting others.

Although Aquarius is known for an emotional detachment that can border on coldness, this sign has a heart soft enough to sympathize easily with others, making it the sign of friendship. Those attributes allow Winfrey to create almost instant intimacy with her guests, studio audience, and millions of home viewers; at the same time, her detachment enables her to maintain control and keep her show on track.

Winfrey generally exhibits Aquarius’s humor, good cheer, and ability to overlook personality flaws, but she does show this sign’s tendency to be hurt easily by small incidents and to imagine snubs. She took it personally when the Paris Hermes store refused her entry after hours and when James Frey, author of the Oprah’s Book Club selection A Million Little Pieces, was exposed for including fictional elements in his drug recovery memoir. In both cases, Winfrey used her clout to bring the perpetrators on her show to decry their treatment of her and extract admissions and apologies.

            Throughout her life, Winfrey has demonstrated her sign’s deep need for freedom. As a child and teen, she expressed it in a negative way by rebelling and engaging in destructive behavior. As an adult, she has lived it by remaining single, enjoying a typically Aquarian unconventional love relationship, and choosing not to have children. Her relationship with best friend Gayle King, which has aroused media attention and speculation about the women’s sexuality, shows this sign’s loyalty, inner mandate to go its own way regardless of public opinion, and the supreme value it places on friendship.

Making the most of Aquarius energy

Winfrey’s life as a child of Aquarius shows the far-reaching humanitarian impact and phenomenal material success one person can achieve when she remains true to herself and expresses the Water Bearer’s highest aspects. During the Sun’s journey through this sign, all of us can make the most of this sign’s gift for individuality by allowing ourselves to march to the beat of our own drummer.

To live in happiness, we must recognize that humanity is a vast family, each one different yet all related, interdependent, and needed. By cultivating our uniqueness and honoring everyone else’s right—and requirement—to live their special individuality, we can fulfill the Aquarian dream of balancing individual uniqueness with the need to work together effectively as a group.

As we learn to honor diversity, we will understand the deep truth of friendship, which seeks not to change others but to celebrate differences and come together in harmony. Then we will stand ready to heal the wounds of our broken world by reaching out in friendship to all our sisters and brothers in the human family.