When times get tough for Oprah and she can't seem to get out of her slump, she turns to the past to remind herself that she's doing just fine. In a recent chat with GOOP's new podcast series hosted by actress Gwyneth Paltrow, Oprah reveals that she reads slave documents because "no crisis seems that much of a crisis after you look at the names, the ages, the prices of people who were before you."
"I will speak their names out loud. I will speak their names out loud — Douglas, and Jenna, and Carrie, and Sarah and Anna — and their ages, and their prices, and remind myself of how far I have come," she explains. "And no crisis seems that much of a crisis after you look at the names, the ages, the prices of people who were before you — who made this way possible."
Furthermore, in the interview, Oprah also says she finds comfort in Harry Herman Roseland’s 1906 painting “To the Highest Bidder" that is the first thing visitors see when they visit her home.
"The most important, though not most expensive [piece of art], in my home is a picture of a slave woman on the auction block with her daughter," she says. "When you come in my house, that’s the first thing you see and that is the grounding painting for me. That woman, who I’ve named Anna and her daughter Sarah, I don’t even know their story, but I know their story."