Super Soul Special: Janet Mock: Redefining Realness

Oprah's Super Soul

Oprah

Society & Culture

4.6 • 33.1K Ratings

🗓️ 8 October 2025

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This episode originally aired February 7, 2018. Janet Mock, the transgender advocate, television host and New York Times best-selling author, discusses her powerful journey, the importance of speaking your truth, and becoming the person you know you were always meant to be. Janet offers insight into not only her transgender experience but also the importance of creating a vision for what is possible, and shows us how to see and accept one another through love. Janet's first memoir, "Redefining Realness," details her bold and inspiring perspective on being young, multicultural and transgender in America. Janet says her journey is similar to that of many people: "I think that we're all searching for the truth. I was constantly, as a person, going through this society trying to figure out who I was in relation to what people were telling me I should be. And so, for me, 'Redefining Realness' was about tapping into my most authentic self. Who am I to me?"

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Oprah Winfrey. Welcome to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast. I believe that one of the most
0:07.8	valuable gifts you can give yourself is time, taking time to be more fully present. Your
0:16.1	journey to become more inspired and connected to the deeper world around us starts right now.
0:24.7	Janet Mock has been at the forefront of what Time magazine calls a transgender tipping point.
0:31.4	Janet Mock says this is only the beginning of a much deeper conversation.
0:37.3	So the reason why this is to me a deeply spiritual conversation
0:40.3	is because the search for your authentic self
0:43.3	is the search that all of us holds as the pathway
0:47.3	on our journey to becoming the highest vision of ourselves.
0:51.3	And I think it's so interesting that it took you,
0:55.0	the time that it took you to become comfortable with telling your story.
1:00.0	And when you finally did for Marie Claire, 2011,
1:04.0	very few people knew at the time that you were trans.
1:08.0	And you kept it quiet because you said you didn't want to become othered,
1:13.6	othered. And now we're sitting here on Super Soul Sunday talking about what that all means.
1:21.6	Do you feel that you've now been othered or have you transcended that?
1:25.6	I don't know if I've transcended it yet. I still think that for
1:30.4	most people, the most interesting part about me is my transness. And so for me, I still feel like
1:35.6	there is an othering about that. But I think there's a lot of power in saying that I will
1:41.3	proudly and unapologetically embrace that part of my identity for once.
1:47.1	The one part of my identity that I was taught growing up to be silent and shamed about, right?
1:52.1	And so to own that label and to say that it is mine and I will stand here in that complicatedness of like existing as a person,
	...

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