“Your house is so beautiful.” She took the smallest beat, and proceeded to give me one of the biggest lessons of my life. “It is, isn’t it?” She said it calmly and without apology. She’d worked her butt off to live in a home she loves. She earned it and she deserves it, and she would do a disservice to herself and the beauty she surrounds herself with if she shrugged it off and deflected the compliment. I’d been in Oprah’s presence, what, two seconds? And already I had a life lesson—that it’s okay for you to say, “I worked hard for what I have. I earned it and I am going to enjoy it, proudly.”
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