JULY memoir of the month: What Happened To You?
What happened To You: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing is the long-awaited book by Oprah Winfrey. While it’s categorized as a self-help book, it could easily mesh into the memoir genre too. It’s full of personal stories where renowned brain and trauma expert, Dr. Bruce Perry, writes about his experience with individual patients while Oprah shares true stories about her life.
I was awe-struck by Oprah’s gut-wrenching honesty as she shared her deepest wounds from abandonment to physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. She wrote with such openness about her traumatic experiences that I found myself holding my breath as I read her words. The woman has not had an easy life. It’s one thing to hear somebody talk about their wounds; it’s another to read about them, to see what words they choose to describe catastrophic events that forever shaped their life.
Oprah’s stories are followed up by solutions and wisdom from Dr. Perry. After the personal stories, the chapters transition into an interview-style with Oprah asking Dr. Perry all the questions related to trauma. Dr. Perry teaches us what trauma does to our mind while urging us to reshape the question from: What is wrong with you?…to…What happened to you? This book is so insightful as Oprah encourages us to take a look at our own lives and see what patterns our own trauma has created in it.
3 Of Oprah’s Most Insightful Revelations:
1.) “The long impact of being whupped – then forced to hush and even smile about it-turned me into a world-class people pleaser for most of my life. It would not have taken me half a lifetime to learn how to set boundaries and say “no” with confidence had I been nurtured differently.” – Oprah
2.) “Traumatic events in my childhood, including an uprooted family, sexual abuse and regular beatings, conditioned me to be a skilled people pleaser. And so, when I felt the stress indicators that my body was sending, I ignored them, choosing instead to sooth myself with the drug that was most easily accessible: food.” – Oprah
3.) “As an adult, I am grateful to enjoy long-term, consistent , loving relationships with many people. Yet the early beatings, emotional fractures, and splintered connections that I experienced with my central figures in life no doubt helped develop my solitary independence.” – Oprah
In this book, Oprah and Dr. Perry aim to focus on understanding people, behaviors, and ourselves. It’s a profound shift in our approach to trauma, and one that will provide answers to all the questions we’ve often wondered about why our parents, partners, friends, and even ourselves do the things we do.
