What Happened To You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing

Winfrey is an American media personality, author, and philanthropist, famous for her television talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show. Winfrey has received numerous awards and accolades for her work in media, and she is also recognized as being the world’s first female African American billionaire. Despite her successful and affluent adult life, Winfrey grew up in poverty in rural Mississippi. She was born to a teenage single mother, Vernita Lee, but was raised by her maternal grandmother, Hattie Mae, for the first few years of her life. Winfrey describes the experience growing up with her grandmother as somewhat paradoxical: while Hattie Mae was firm to the point of being physically abusive in her manner of disciplining, Winfrey also credits her grandmother for instilling a positive sense of self in her. Nevertheless, Hattie Mae’s particular brand of discipline did leave a mark; the book opens with Winfrey recounting her experience of being “whupped” by her grandmother for an innocent childhood infraction. Even though “whupping” seemed to be the cultural norm in many African American families, Winfrey describes realizing, even at that young age, that what was happening to her was not right. Hattie Mae’s method of disciplining, coupled with harsh reminders that Winfrey ought not to cry but bear her suffering with a smile on her face, led to a pattern of compliance and people-pleasing later in life that Winfrey retrospectively acknowledges.

A few other experiences also seem to have contributed to this pattern. From the age of six, Winfrey was raised by her mother Vernita in inner-city Milwaukee. Over-extended by the struggles of having to work as a maid and care for two other children besides Winfrey, the latter was often shuttled between Vernita’s house and that of her father, Vernon, in Nashville. Being as overwhelmed as she was, Vernita was not a particularly caring or engaged mother, and Winfrey recalls feeling exceptionally lonely as a young child. Furthermore, she has openly spoken about having been abused by family members in childhood and her teenage years, something that her family dismissed when she opened up to them about her experience as an adult. All these factors seemed to have influenced several behaviors in Winfrey’s later life; she acknowledges staying in many of her problematic romantic relationships because of the low self-worth she developed as a function of her past. Winfrey also attributes some of the weight gain she experienced at different times in her adult life to this low self-worth and the need to feel loved and accepted.

Even as these events unfolded in Winfrey’s personal life, her professional one continued to see success after success. She rose to fame as a media personality and a talk show host, gaining her great fame through the confessional style of media conversation that she made popular. During her career as a talk show host, Winfrey went on to interview hundreds of people, from celebrities and politicians to laypeople with stories on a variety of topics. Coping with trauma and abuse was one such topic.

Winfrey’s personal and professional lives both play into her motivation to co-author a book such as What Happened to You? Winfrey’s own history of trauma and abuse led her to have a self-confessed interest in making sense of her past and understanding the implications it has on who she is today. She describes how she arrived at finally being able to set healthy boundaries and say “no” to people with hard work and intention, as she was conditioned to be a people-pleaser from childhood. As part of her profession, Winfrey has simultaneously always been interested in uncovering other people’s stories and mastering the art of leading and directing a conversation. Her experience of countless interviews over the years led her to a couple of profound realizations, which she describes in the book: firstly, that all pain is the same, irrespective of the specific event that caused it, and secondly, in sharing one’s pain with another, humans are able to connect, empathize, and heal. This is also in keeping with the Māori approach to pain that Perry describes in the book, where all pain is viewed as arising from the same cause: fragmentation, disconnection, and desynchrony. Winfrey’s second realization is that at their very core, all humans have the same need to be seen, appreciated, and loved. Perry confirms this in the book, asserting that love and belonging are essential to human biology; this idea is further explored through the theme of Love and Relationships throughout the book. Winfrey arrived at both realizations due to a confluence of her personal and professional lives and experiences, further explaining her interest in and desire to co-author this book.