Oprah Winfrey Makes Heartbreaking Confession (Video)

Oprah Winfrey is opening up about one of the most painful relationships of her life, revealing that she grew up without feeling loved or emotionally supported by her late mother, Vernita Lee.

In a deeply personal appearance on The Mel Robbins Podcast, the 72-year-old media mogul said she now believes her mother loved her in the best way she knew how. But as a child, Winfrey said that love was something she simply did not feel.

“I don’t actually remember feeling loved by my mother or my grandmother growing up,” Winfrey told Robbins. She said she later came to understand that both women likely loved her, even if they struggled to show it in ways she could recognize. (Mel Robbins)

Winfrey said the lack of validation at home pushed her to find encouragement elsewhere. She excelled in school, became a strong speaker and sought approval from teachers because, in her words, that was where she felt a sense of worth.

The full conversation can be heard on Mel Robbins’ official podcast page, where Winfrey discusses everything from purpose and family to forgiveness and the lessons that shaped her life.

One memory involving her mother still stands out.

Winfrey recalled driving with Lee in Chicago when her mother casually remarked that although the family did not have much money, they had plenty of love.

Winfrey said the statement stunned her so badly that she “almost wrecked the car.”

Her reaction came from how differently she remembered those years.

Winfrey said she could not recall her mother complimenting her or telling her she was proud of her. She also remembered being criticized as a young girl for choosing to sit indoors and read rather than go outside with other children.

“I remember being punished for wanting to read,” she said. (Mel Robbins)

Yet Winfrey said her view of her mother changed dramatically as she got older.

A lesson from Bishop T.D. Jakes helped her reconsider what people are actually capable of giving emotionally. Winfrey described the idea as expecting “10-gallon” levels of love and affirmation from someone who may only have a “pint-size” emotional capacity.

For Winfrey, that realization eventually applied directly to her mother.

She began focusing not only on what Lee had failed to give her, but also on the ways she did show care. Winfrey pointed to her mother’s cooking and her efforts to keep food and shelter available for the family as expressions of love that she had not necessarily recognized that way as a child. (Mel Robbins)

There was also another part of Lee’s life Winfrey said she came to understand.

Her mother spent years working as a maid and domestic worker, caring for other people’s homes and children before returning to her own family. Winfrey said she eventually realized her mother may have been emotionally drained by the time she came home.

“By the time you came home, you had nothing left for me,” Winfrey said of that realization. “I recognize that now and I forgive that.” (Mel Robbins)

That perspective allowed Winfrey to make peace with Lee well before her mother’s death.

Lee died at age 83 on Thanksgiving Day in November 2018 at her Milwaukee home. In the period surrounding her death, Winfrey also publicly described being able to spend time with her mother during her final days and telling her that she believed she had done the best she knew how to do under difficult circumstances. (Oprah Daily)

Years later, Winfrey has continued to describe their relationship as complicated. In a 2024 reflection on what she has called the “mother wound,” she said she was grateful that they eventually reconciled despite the pain that marked much of her childhood. (Oprah Daily)

Winfrey told Robbins that forgiveness ultimately became less about excusing the past and more about accepting that it could not be rewritten.

Her longtime definition of forgiveness, she explained, is letting go of the hope that what already happened could somehow have been different.

For Winfrey, that acceptance appears to have been what finally allowed her to move forward.

“Until you get there,” she said of acceptance, “you’re still just living in the past.” (Mel Robbins)