Kicking off her appearance on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" on Tuesday (April 13), [artist id="854"]Mary J. Blige[/artist] sang [article id="1633563"]her cover of the classic Led Zeppelin tune "Stairway to Heaven."[/article] But the real reason behind her visit was to talk about her struggles growing up in New York and how she hopes to empower young women.

"I could have been dead because of this environment," she said about her childhood in Yonkers. "But because of this environment, I'm alive too. I remember one day being there. I was sitting there, and it was a cloudy day. I started praying. I was really depressed that day, and I was crying, and I was like, 'Father, if there's a way out, please show me.' As I was asking him that day, the sky ... opened up and the sun came down. And I knew at that moment I was going to get out."

As a superstar musician, Blige started the Foundation for the Advancement of Women Now, which allows young women to seek the support and education she craved as a child. "It's a dream come true," she told Oprah. "My thing is, if you save women, you save the world. This is probably one of the most important places, because when women are looking for jobs, a lot of time they don't have babysitters. That's another thing that holds them back."

Blige said she's committed to making sure women can get the help they need through her foundation. "From mothers to daughters to aunts, black, white, it doesn't matter who you are: If you need help, the Mary J. Blige Center for Women is here," she said. "It's starting small, but we're going to get bigger. When you're educated, you're confident. You know what you're speaking about. You know who you are."

When Blige was a kid, she said, getting an education wasn't the hip thing to do, so she didn't think she could seek that out. "When I was growing up, it wasn't cool to be educated, so I fell into that slump," she explained. "When you're in a peer-pressure situation where you're forced to do what everyone else does to survive, then you end up like I did."

Blige told MTV News that kids now understand that education is vital to their success. "I look at this generation and anyone who doesn't have an opportunity to finish or to get that education or have the confidence they need to get out and go out and get the jobs they want, I look at them like they're as my children," she said. "And I always want my children to have a better opportunity than I had. That's why I'm going so hard to get them to college.

"I take everyone on a journey of why this movement is so important, why the Mary J. Blige movement is so important to me," Blige added. "I've done nothing but given back. My fans are loyal to me because of the journey that we've taken together."

As an adult, Blige said she has a very different philosophy in her own life. "I strive to be educated, to grow older gracefully, be happy and comfortable with myself," she said. "And to have helped more women with my walk -- not with what I'm saying but what they're seeing."

What do you think of Blige's commitment to helping young women? Tell us in the comments.