***Two Lessons that Single Women Over 40 Can Learn from Oprah

I hate being like everyone else, but I have to make an exception for Oprah. Everyone is talking about her, and rightly so. May 25 is her final show. Oprah will no longer be visiting us every weekday, teaching us, nourishing our spirits and making us laugh. The positive transformation this one woman has effected in the world is breathtaking. Oprah is perhaps the most magnanimous and loving woman I've ever seen. And I give her billions of extra points for being so in this time of ever-pervasive greed and fear mongering. She had many roads she could have taken to achieve her incredible success, but she chose to use her platform to help us learn, heal and love our lives. Oprah did something else that I think gets overlooked: she gave us permission to be loved and accepted as real women. Oprah has shown the world that women can be brilliant, creative, silly, powerful, vulnerable, curious, competent, pained, ambitious, spiritual, confident, sensitive, competitive, successful, demonstrative, honest, relentless, tentative, bold, nurturing, kind and…yes, even overweight…and be loved. Oprah is imperfect and a little nutty, just like we are. And that's what makes her so incredibly glorious! Yes, Oprah's shows were poignant and life changing. But if you look past the content, I hope you can seen what I've seen: a highly complex and imperfect woman showing us that it's okay to be our true selves, love openly and expect to be loved in return. My career and my passion is helping single women over 40 who are looking for love find hope and then find him. The majority of women I support struggle with feelings of inadequacy. They've attached themselves to the belief that their imperfection somehow makes them unworthy of admiration and love. Ladies: Oprah has been proving to us for years that as long as you are being real and trying to be your best you are beautiful, you are worthy and your story has significance. That's a lesson that I hope you have learned from her. If you need a mirror held up to your beautiful self or you need a cheerleader – and we all do at times – then reach out. That's what coaches like me are here for, as well the Oprah's of the world, your friends and your loved ones. That's the second lesson we can learn from her; especially single women in their 45s, 50s and beyond who tend to struggle with asking for help. By proudly inviting support from experts like Maya Angelou and Suze Orman, as well as from scores of everyday people, Oprah shows us that our power is not in doing it alone. Our power is in asking for a compassionate guiding hand to help us live our best lives possible.