-Kate and Zack Collinger-- they're
two children who recently lost their mother to cancer.
Their family spent an incredible final year
together, visiting as many wonderful places as they could.
But this is really what got to me.
They'd been to lots of different places
and they'd been to Palm Springs and Disney World
and shared a lot of different things.
And I said, what was your favorite memory?
And here's what she told me.
What are your fondest memories, Kate, of that time?
When we went to Palm Springs for family vacation.
And she was in bed, but I came home after swimming.
And she said, can you get me a bowl of Cheerios?
And I said, sure.
So I remember that.
OPRAH WINFREY: A bowl of Cheerios.
KATE COLLINGER: She ate everything.
OPRAH WINFREY: Really?
KATE COLLINGER: She got up at 2 o'clock in the morning
and went downstairs and ate.
And about a week before she died,
before she went into the hospital,
I was in their room and sleeping.
And I said, Mom, will you wake me up if you go downstairs
to eat a bowl of cereal? She said, yeah.
So at 2 o'clock in the morning, we both went down
and we ate the cereal together.
OPRAH WINFREY: That is-- really?
Cheerios? KATE COLLINGER: Yeah.
Amazing.
Kate's simple Cheerios moment had a big impact on me.
And I always remembered it.
Today, that little Kate is 29 years old.
My team caught up with her to find out how she is now.
KATE COLLINGER (VOICEOVER): For a while after the show,
I was the Cheerios girl.
I mean, that was 18 years ago.
There's been a lot of life that's happened since then.
My family changed.
The dynamic completely shifted.
My dad was a workaholic.
He sacrificed.
He went from this high-powered advertising executive
to taking a huge pay cut and became a professor
at Northwestern so he could be available to take us to school
and be at home at night to have dinner with us.
I went from being a mommy's girl to being a daddy's girl.
And he and my brother are my people.
They're my tribe.
So my freshman year of college, I went to Northwestern.
I was in a deep depression.
I wasn't getting out of bed.
I wasn't showering.
I was overeating.
And I ended up seeing a psychiatrist
for the first time in my life.
And he put me on an antidepressant.
And he said, if she's bipolar, this could flip her,
because for people who are put on antidepressants who are
bipolar, it has the capacity to antidepress
them so much that they'll be sent into a manic episode.
And all of the sudden, I was feeling good.
I didn't need therapy anymore.
I didn't really need to eat, because I wasn't really hungry
anymore.
I didn't need to sleep because I wasn't really tired anymore.
I was engaging in risky behavior.
In November 2005 I took a hallucinogenic drug
with a friend and got in a car, blacked out, and I wake up
and I'm pressing the accelerator of the car,
having no idea why it wasn't going anywhere.
And I look up, and there's an electrical post about 10,
15 feet from my face.
And they took me to the hospital.
And that was my induction into a 12-step program.
And that was the beginning of a very long journey for me
to get sober and stay sober, because for a very long time,
I felt like I could control it.
For a very long time, I felt like the drug or the drink
or whatever I ingested was going to change.
It was going to be different next time.
Today, it's about the choices that I make on a daily basis--
proactive decisions that I make on a daily basis
towards living a healthier, more balanced life.
I have such a tremendous network of family and friends
that are there on the other end of the line when I need them.
Last night, we were looking through this book
that her dad had given her for her 18th birthday.
KATE COLLINGER (VOICEOVER): It feels like it's
been a very long road.
I'm telling a very different story than I
did when I was 11 years old.
And I have a different message to convey.
I get up every morning and go to a job
that I've held for almost two years.
And I continue to have a lot of love and support.
And my mother is a part of that.
She passed away almost two decades ago.
But she shows up for me when I hear "It's a Wonderful World,"
you know?
That was her favorite song.
And that comes on sometimes exactly when I need it to.
Or in the letter that she wrote to me before she passed away,
she said she'd always been in my corner cheering me on.
I think that inherent feeling that I had as a little girl
when I talked about the Cheerios experience still is very
present for me today, you know?
It's not about the vacations or the money or whatever.
It's about the intimate moment of connection
that you have on a daily basis with the world around you.
And the magnitude and scope of the relationships and love
that I have in my life today with my family, who
are friends, and my friends, who are family-- that's what's
so profound and important and incredible to me.