“Don’t expect the clarity to come all at once, to know your purpose right away,” urged Oprah in her May 2013 commencement speech to Harvard graduates. After several years in the media business, Oprah said, “it became clear to me that I was here on earth to use television and not be used by it.” And that is precisely what she’s done — she’s grown an empire and has used the transcendent power of her industry to better people’s lives.
Coming from a different place in the media business, Mika Brzezinski is following in Oprah’s footsteps, using her platform as co-host on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” to address the tender issues of negative body image, binge eating and the restriction of food. Like Oprah, Mika has struggled with compulsive overeating and a hidden obsession with shame and self-criticism. In her current bestseller, Obsessed, Mika Brzezinski says, “I never really thought I brought much to the table, so junk food filled the emptiness I felt.” She reveals personal encounters from a lifetime of hiding her own challenges with body dissatisfaction and patterns of disordered eating, healthcare and overall emotional…