English version | To be Continued: Stories of hope

Sometimes the world brings us down, leaves us with no faith and confidence. But what, in our lives, may seem like the end, is often only a small obstacle. What we need is courage and strength to turn our life around. These are some of the real tales of who never gave up and overcame the most unlikely challenges. These are stories of hope.

© Getty Images, Artwork by Mariana Matos
© Getty Images, Artwork by Mariana Matos

Oprah Winfrey

Oprah needs no introduction and no last name - she hit a status that allows her to be recognized only by her first name, at the same level of Madonna or maybe Cher. A public figure, actress, author and philanthropist, she’s a little bit of everything. But the path until she became a multimillionaire and the richest african-american of the XX century was long and hard. Oprah started from scratch - almost literally. She was born to separated and absent parents and, up until the age of six, lived with her grandmother. The family was so poor that Winfrey wore potato sacks as dresses. Poverty, however, never stopped her from reaching further. It was only at three years old that she learned to read verses from the Bible and at church she was called “the preacher”. Soon after she started living with her mother, Oprah was molested by an uncle and a cousin, an abusive situation that began when she was nine and reached an intolerable point when, at 13, she ran away from home. A year later, she gave birth prematurely to a son who died shortly after being delivered. This was the only child she ever mothered.

Oprah was always dedicated to her studies and maybe this effort was what led her to where she is today. Because of her academic success, she was transferred to an elite highschool, where she worked to get a college scholarship - which she secured at the University of Tennessee, where she studied communications. The degree took 12 years to be completed, since the north american quickly launched herself to the spotlight as a TV host in 1976. Seven years later, Oprah is transferred to Chicago to host a low audience morning show. It didn’t take long for her to stand out in the industry: months after she joined the project, the show became the most watched in the city. Despite the apparent success, it wasn’t always easy for Oprah, not even after her career had been launched out there. It was in 1981 that she wrote a suicide note to her best friend, Gayle King, after (another) heartbreak. The entrepreneur ended up not trying to take her own life and focused on her professional aspirations. In 1986, the show changed its name to The Oprah Winfrey Show. From then on, things have only gotten better. She had her premiere as an actress in The Color Purple, to which she owes the Tony for Best Musical Revival, and an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Since 1996, she has signed ten literary works, from autobiographies to nutrition books. “The great courageous act that we must all do, is to have the courage to step out of our history and past so that we can live our dreams” - Oprah said it and has definitely done it. 

Maya Angelou

“You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them”. The poetess and activist’s words will forever echo within us, as the trace that was left by a great woman who impacted the lives of even those who never heard her name. Maya Angelou’s is the original transformation tale - from an abuse victim to independent woman and renown activist. 

It was at eight years old that she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend. The man ended up serving only one day in jail and, days after he was released, he was assassinated, presumably by Angelou’s uncles. Eaten up by the guilt of having reported the situation and having caused his death, she didn’t speak for five years. Until she was 13, Maya Angelou’s silence introduced her to authors who would influence her own work, like Charles Dickens and Edgar Allen Poe. She gained her speech back thanks to a teacher who told her “you do not love poetry, not until you speak it”. Three years later, she made history by becoming the first African American woman to conduct a streetcar in San Francisco.

After having her only son at 17 years old, she married a Greek electrician, against her mother’s will. She was a calypso dancer, a Caribbean music genre, in a group she founded with other artists and choreographers. The path to recognition wasn’t easy for the author who, after getting divorced, danced in bars and clubs in California and was even a prostitute and a mistress at a brothel. Maya Angelou was never ashamed of her past: in her autobiographies, the author talks openly about what she had to do to secure good conditions for her family. Early on, she was involved in social causes, particularly the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. Maya Angelou knew Martin Luther King Jr. and was a good friend of Malcom X’s before his assassination. The activist’s career passed through Egypt, where she worked as an editor at The Arab Observer. In 1965, she returned to the United States and participated directly in organizations and movements of the social cause.

Her first, and perhaps most known, book was published in 1969. I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings is the autobiography that gave Maya Angelou her fame and popularity - how amazing is it that she did it simply by telling her story? Besides having been a poetess, dancer and activist, she was also in the performing arts world, having been nominated for a Tony award for her performance in Look Away. Angelou won three Grammys for Best Spoken Word Album, one of which for the poem she recited at president Bill Clinton’s inauguration. Maya Angelou died in 2014 at 86 years old, but the work she left behind is vast, brilliant and promises to always shine a light with the memory of a glorious and inspiring life.

Viktor Frankl

What is it that keeps us alive? There’s something in each of us that seems to keep us clinging to life, some more than others. Viktor Frankl was definitely one who, despite it all, refused to succumb to the misery he had been condemned to endure. 

Born in 1905 in Vienna, Austria, to a jewish family, Frankl revealed from early on a fascination by the study of the mind and psychology. Actually, saying he was fascinated by it may be an understatement - it was more than a passion, we dare describe it as his life purpose. As a teenager, he exchanged letters with Sigmund Freud, father of psychoanalysis, and soon after went to the University of Vienna to study medicine, specializing in Neurology and Psychiatry. Always involved in social causes, Frankl became president of the youth group of the Social Democratic Party of Austria and founded a therapy center at the university to fight the high number of suicides. Was it a successful initiative? Let’s just say that in 1931, two years after, there wasn’t a single student in Vienna taking their own life.

It was in 1938 that Viktor Frankl’s apparently smooth life started becoming more and more difficult with the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany. Because he was jewish, his private practice was immediately limited and he ended up joining the Rothschild Hospital, the only one that still treated jewish citizens. During the year he spent at the hospital, Frankl saved patients destined to euthanasia for mental disability, risking his own life.

Frankl, with his wife, parents and siblings, was sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1941, where his father died of starvation and pneumonia. Three years later, the rest of the family was transferred to Auschwitz, where the shrink’s mother and brother were killed in the gas chambers. His wife ended up dying of typhoid at the Bergen-Belsen camp. During the three years he was held prisoner, Viktor Frankl went through four different concentration camps.

After the liberation in 1945, the shrink quickly went back to practicing medicine and studying, having obtained his PhD three years later. Frankl is known not for his tragic story, but for what he did at the end of that stage - he founded logotherapy, a method based on the idea that the main motivational force is for someone to find their life purpose. Perhaps this was his, that kept him clinging to life despite all odds.

Frida Kahlo

Everyone knows the famous unibrow that distinguishes dozens of self portraits by the Mexican artist, whose life seems to have been a series of unfortunate events. Frida Kahlo “lived dying”, as Andrés Henestrosa said, who was an author and friend.

From early on, Kahlo seemed to be truly aware of the tension that surrounded her, since she described her childhood as sad, due to her parents’ unhappy and loveless marriage. It was at six years old that she was diagnosed with polio, which forced her to isolate for months, and live with fragile health for the rest of her life. Years after returning to school, she was sexually abused by a teacher.

Her passion for painting revealed itself only when she was 18, as a result of another tragedy: after a bus crash, Kahlo was severely injured, having been impaled in the pelvis and having broken her spine in many places. Bound to a bed for three months, her father built an easel that allowed to paint while laying down, and this was where she began her career. She married Diego Rivera, a plastic artist, with whom she had two marriages - yes, two - both with several affairs, from both sides. Actually, one of the most unlikely was in 1937, when Leon Trotsky was exiled in Kahlo’s home and with whom he had a brief relationship. The painter was pregnant several times, but ended up miscarrying or having abortions. 

Her work started becoming popular in the beginning of the 1930s, when she moved to the United States with Rivera, but the couple quickly went back to Mexico: as a supporter of the Communist Party, Kahlo despised capitalist culture and the inequality that is so characteristic of the country. Back at the Blue House, the artist started painting more and being included in shows all over the world, including at MoMA in New York.

Always with a fragile health, Kahlo had to wear supportive corsets because of her spine and had several complications, like a chronic infection on her hand and even syphilis. The house where she lived became her exile and she slowly turned it into a home - the gardens were well taken care of and she had many pets, like monkeys, dogs and parrots. After a failed spine surgery, the painter was bound to a wheelchair. In 1953, her right leg had to be amputated, which motivated her to try to take her own life with pills. Death would come only in july 1954, by pneumonia, and was received by Frida Kahlo with relief and even some fondness, according to the last words she left written in her diary: “I joyfully await the exit - and I hope never to return”.

Ludwig van Beethoven

Pianist, composer and, apparently, eternally disturbed by what life brought him. Born in Bonn, Germany, in a privileged family, Ludwig van Beethoven had six siblings, but only two reached adulthood - the remaining four died in the first few months or years of life. 

The musical talent was obvious and at five years old he was forced, by his father, to a hard rehearsal schedule that went until the late hours of night. Besides having been his first piano teacher, his father tormented him, often over the influence of alcohol. After his mother’s death, at 16 years old, Beethoven was in charge of raising his two younger brothers, due to his father’s incapacity. Forced to set his studies aside, the young musician suddenly found himself being the only breadwinner, by teaching classical music and playing at operas. Soon after, he finally began composing symphonies. However, it was only at 28 that Beethoven started losing his hearing. The reason why isn’t clear, but it has been speculated that it could have been caused by an illness, like syphilis or typhoid, by his habit of dunking his head in cold water to keep himself awake, and some even say it was the result of a feud with a singer. With no probable cause or a cure for his deafness, the pianist even contemplated suicide, as he described in a letter he wrote to his brothers, but never sent.

Besides his physical issues, Beethoven experienced many heartbreaks, since he was always in love with women he could not have. It was in 1812 that the musician wrote a letter to his Immortal Beloved, the name by which the text is known, in which he declares his unconditional love and begs for reciprocity.

When one of his brothers was sick with tuberculosis, Ludwig van Beethoven was awarded custody of his nephew, who he enforces a strict education, despite the young man having ran away to his mother several times. The pianist was so inflexible that his nephew tried to kill himself, unsuccessfully. Besides his deafness aggravating, Beethoven became very fragile in his last years, the same when he composed some of his most famous works. The musician suffered from rheumatism, edema and difficulty breathing. He had a few interventions done to drain fluid from his abdomen. After passing away in 1827, at 56 years old, several autopsy reports confirmed that the medical effort to save him could have been his death sentence, since the instruments that were used caused lead poisoning. 

After a difficult life, almost full of misery, Beethoven became what is probably the most notable pianist of all time, even after losing the ability to hear.

Translated from the original, part of the New Beginnings issue from Vogue Portugal, published September 2021.For the portuguese version, click here.