What Maya Angelou Knew About Happiness That Most People Miss | Super Soul Sparks

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0:32Hi, it's Ashley from OWN. I used to think great work was about being in the right headspace. Then I found a TikTok video that made me think about my physical space. An interior designer explored how things like ceiling height and room size might influence how we think. Now I wonder how much of our environment shapes our work without us noticing. Now I'm looking at my workspace asking what kind of thinking I'm making room for. On TikTok, one idea can change how you see something you thought you knew. Your next discovery is waiting on TikTok. My Angela has been a writer, dancer, singer, artist, professor, director, and activist.

1:11She's traveled the world, speaks seven languages, and is one of the world's greatest poets. But to me, she's my mother-sister friend, as I call her, the woman I've looked to for strength and inspiration for more than 35 years now. Maya Angelou was born in St. Louis in 1928. By the time she was seven, she'd already suffered a life-changing event. She was raped by her mother's boyfriend. Maya told her family what had happened, and when the man was later found murdered, she believed, in her seven-year-old mind, that it was all her fault. Convinced that her words had the power to kill, young Maya didn't speak another word for several years retreating into a private world populated with books and poetry.

1:59In fact, it was poetry that helped her find her voice again as she learned from one of her teachers that great poetry must be spoken. And speak she did, Maya grew into a confident and accomplished force of nature. As an adult, she became a fierce civil rights activist working closely with both Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Her seminal autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, published to international acclaim, was named by Time Magazine to be one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time. Never one to slow down, Dr. Maya Angelou went on to write more than 30 additional books, earning countless honors and awards.

2:45And she just finished her latest piece of work and inspiration sharing some of the deepest personal stories of her life in Mom and Me and Mom. She's given motherly advice to millions and is certainly, as I've said many times, like a mother to me. You've written a new book. I know it. Mom and Me and Mom. And we're going to talk a lot about that today because I know what Vivian Baxter meant in your life. Yes. And you say that your mother's love encouraged you to live your life with pizzazz. Yes. Would you say that you've had a life filled with pizzazz? Yes, I have. You have such a long list of achievements, as we were compiling them.

3:25You were the first black streetcar conductor in the city of San Francisco. I was 16. You were 16. Yes, I was black, 16, and had the nerve to walk. I saw women on the streetcars with their little changer belts, with, you know, that, and they had caps with bills on them, and they had form-fitting jackets. You liked the uniform. I loved the uniforms. So I said, that's the job I want. They'd never hired a black person? They'd never, no. So did you see that as the accomplishment that it was at the time? No, my mother did. Because mother, I said, I went down to place an application and they wouldn't even give it to me.

4:12And so I went back to my mother and I said, They wouldn't even allow me to apply. She asked me, why? Do you know why? I said, yes, because I'm a Negro. She said, yes, but do you want the job? I said, yes. She said, go get it. Here, I give you money. Every day you go down, be there before the secretaries get there. You sit there in the office. You read one of your big, thick Russian books. I was reading Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy or something at the time. She said, and then when they go to lunch, then you go. go to a good restaurant, you know how to order good food, go back before the secretaries get there.

4:48I did all of it, and then sit there until they leave. They laughed at me, they pushed out their lips, and used some negative racial things, but I sat there after. At 16? Yes, but look in here, here's the thing. I sat there because I was afraid to go home. I was afraid to tell my mother that I wasn't as strong as she thought I was. Wow. So I sat there for two weeks every day. And then after two weeks, a man came out of his office. He said, come in. And he asked me, why do you want the job? I said, I like the uniforms.

5:29And I said, and I like people. And so I got the job. Amazing. What's amazing is the story that you tell in Mom and Me of your mother, knowing that you were a 16-year-old, on the streetcars, and that she followed you in her... You tell the story. About 4 o 'clock in the morning, she'd wake me up with my bath already drawn. I'd take a bath, put on my uniform, and she would drive me out to the beach. And she had her pistol on the seat of the car. And she would follow the streetcar all the way from the beach down to the ferry building, right through San Francisco, and back again out to the beach until daybreak.

6:11I mean, stay close so that nobody got on that she didn't see. And then at 6.30 or 7.00. That's a mother. She's a mother. That's a mother. She was really all of that. And she asked me, mother, she said, now, what did you learn from that job? Because when it was time for me to go back to school, I went back to school. I said, I learned that I like to work. She said, what else did you learn? I said, I don't know. She said, about yourself. You learn that you're very strong. The determination. Wow. Dedication. And you can go anywhere in the world. Anywhere. And I've gone everywhere in the world. So as we list all of your achievements, the first black streetcar conductor, dancer, singer, poet, playwright, film producer, director, actor, civil rights activist, professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University, recipient of more than 70 honorary doctorate degrees, and author of more than 30 books.

7:14Is there anything you wanted to have on that list but didn't get a chance to do? One of the things I wanted was to have a daughter. I have a son who is in my heart, wonderful young man, wonderful person, good human being, daring and loving and strong and kind. I wanted a daughter. And I've taken people's daughters. I have certainly taken you. I took my daughter-in-law. Because I know I'm a good mother. I care and I dare. I care enough to let you go. But I dare enough to follow you. I will say that too. And I will say, you know, one of my, part of my nature is to be obedient. I'm obedient to God's call.

8:05And over the years, when I would call you for advice, sometimes I would take it. I know it. Most often I would take it. Most often I took it, right? Yes, that's true. And sometimes I didn't. But you have never been the kind of mother that says, I told you so. No. So when I didn't take it, and the mistake inevitably happened, You were not the kind of mother to come back and say, I told you. No, but you were the kind of daughter who said, I was wrong. I was wrong. I should have listened. I should have listened. Hi, it's Ashley from OWN. One of my favorite things about the holidays is hosting. The holiday season is all about family and friends enjoying one another, and I take pride in being able to do so at my home.

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10:01Additional taxes, fees, and terms apply.

10:06First of all, have you ever tried and failed at something? Yes, many times. Many times. You forgive yourself for every failure. Yes. Because you tried to do the right thing. God knows that and you know it. Yeah. Nobody else may know it. Yeah. Well, because one of the great lessons that I've learned from you, and it's so interesting, I was just interviewing Sissy Houston, and she recited to me what I have learned from you, and I've now recited to other people. So now it's coming back to me, and she said, well, you know, when you know better, you do better. That's the ticket. That's the ticket. That's it.

10:38And that's why you forgive yourself. Yes, ma 'am. Because if you'd known better... I'd have done better. Yeah. In her latest memoir, Maya Angelou says the lessons from her mother, Vivian Baxter, are highlighted in her memory like technicolor stars in a midnight sky. My mother's gifts of courage to me were both large and small. The latter are woven so subtly into the fabric of my psyche that I can hardly distinguish where she stops and I begin. You say that this book has been written to examine some of the ways that love heals and helps a person to climb to impossible heights and rise from immeasurable deaths.

11:21It's true. Yes. It's true. Love does that. Love does that. Love liberates. And love from a parent, and I mean from a mother or a father, love, not sentimentality, not much, but true love. Love that gives you enough courage that you can say to somebody, don't do that, baby. And the person will know you're not preaching, you're teaching. Yes, yes. Maya Angelou developed an even deeper connection to her mother when she became pregnant at 16. She calls the birth of her only child, her son Guy, the greatest blessing of her life. When Maya told Vivian Baxter she was going to have a baby, her mother didn't get angry.

12:07Instead, she welcomed the baby boy into their lives. even guiding the young mother as she struck out on her own. When Guy was only two months old, you moved out of the house, and I love the story about what your mother said to you as you were leaving. She says, all right, you go, but remember this. When you cross my doorstep, you have already been raised. Yes. With what you've learned from your grandmother in Arkansas and what you've learned from me, you know the difference between right and wrong. Do right and don't let anybody raise you from the way you've been raised. Know you will always have to make adjustments in love relationships, in friends, in society, in work.

12:44But don't let anybody change your mind. And then remember this. You can always come home. She did. She did. And whenever I'd go home, the world would throw me flat on my face with this little baby I'm trying to raise and work and sing songs and dance. And I would go home to Vivian Baxter. she would act as if the best thing that has ever happened she'd call her friends girl you can't believe it the baby is home I'm going to cook this for her she loves Spanish rice I'm going to cook that for her listen don't try to come over I'm going to have her to myself for at least three or four hours then you can come over she never ever made me feel that I'd done the wrong thing I know and even at 16 when you became pregnant she did not shame you she said we're going to have this beautiful baby.

13:36She asked me, she said, do you know who the father is? I said, yes. I only had sex with him one time, but then he's the only one. She said, all right. Do you love him? I said, no. She asked me, does he love you? I said, no. She said, we're not going to ruin three lives. We're going to have a beautiful baby. Wow. Yes, she did. Wow. And she loved my son. Yes. She was a knockout Vivian Baxter. She was a knockout. Tell me this. You've been my greatest teacher. Who's been your greatest teachers? Probably my grandmother and my mother. Really? Mm-hmm. Your greatest teachers? My greatest teachers. I watched Grandmother Henderson and I watched Vivian Baxter.

14:18Vivian Baxter with this incredible anger whenever anybody tried to do her down. This same woman was so kind. I never in my life, she was very pretty. she never laughed at anybody ever. I liked that in her. Uh-huh. Because she had everything. She had money, she had beauty and health. Uh-huh. And she never laughed at anybody. And you didn't think of yourself as a pretty girl. Oh, no, I wasn't a pretty girl. There were pretty girls who had long hair and fair skin and that. And I was so tall. I was 6 foot 15. So how did you learn to love yourself at that time? Well, Bailey loved me. My grandmother loved me.

15:06And my mother loved me. Because another book that you wrote that's a poem, Nobody Makes It Alone. Nobody, but nobody makes it out here alone. Nobody makes it alone. And everybody needs somebody. And that's how love heals. The love of the family, the love of one person can heal. So it heals the scars left, wounds left by a larger society, a massive, powerful society.

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