Me and Oprah

My twitter friend Erin Bury got retweeted on Twitter by Oprah this week as the OWN Network launched. I was excited for her as I remembered last year when one of my tweets to Oprah was picked up by the New York Times.  I wrote about that last year here.

Erin and I will both admit to a love affair with Oprah. Oprah has been on the air for almost my entire adult life and well most of Erin’s life. I know for me I have been a fan for years. I will be sad to see her go.

I tweeted to Erin yesterday that I almost got to be on the Oprah show after being her buzz kill on Tuesday. She suggested I blog the story so here is  the How I almost came to be on Oprah.

Well it was several years ago. I had just gone through a rather hard and bitter divorce. I ended up in a battered women’s shelter in Carlsbad, NM. That shelter was Rachel’s first home.  Well I made it through 6 months down south and well I brought my baby back home to Canada.

I had to reinvent myself. I went from being married and having 11 homes and a ranch to it being just me and her. I wrote Oprah a letter. This was back in the day when Dr Phil and his common sense approach to helping change lives was just beginning on Oprah. I really wanted to meet Dr Phil as I thought he could help me get things back on track. Little  did I know the show had me in mind for a different show. Gary Zukav ( the author of Seat of the Soul) was just about to make I think like his second or third appearance on the show. The letter I wrote Oprah ( by the way that letter was the very first I had ever written to a show of any kind) caught the eye of one of Oprah’s producers.

I got the call while at work. I had gone to work after coming back to Canada in a call center. I was working for Sitel at the time, the client I was working for at the time was a new ISP that was just launching in the US market. This conversation took place in 2000. When the producer called I was working with a customer so my manager took the call. He then came over to my desk and said you have a message: Oprah called. I looked at him and said “What?”. His reply was well you are to call her producer as soon as you can.

Well the producer and I played phone tag for the afternoon. She later called me at home that evening. We spoke for about 45 minutes about the contents of my letter and what was going on in my life. We talked about the show that she was producing with Gary. She said she would get back to me the next day. She did. They decided to go another direction. She thought I was doing awesome on my own, and suggested I read his book and watch the episode and said my letter might get read on air. It didn’t.

So that is how I almost came to be on Oprah. I have been a fan for all 25 years and I am sure will come to watch a few of the shows she has launched on her OWN Network, after all I do watch her kids Dr Oz and Dr Phil. The reality is though I would of loved to have been on her show, or even to at least sat in the audience just once but as her 25th and final season draws to a close I don’t think that is going to happen.  Unless maybe one of O’s staff is reading, could it be? Or could Dr Phil’s be reading?

Source: http://commoncentsmom.com/2011/03/04/me-and-oprah/