14/05/2025
I’ve spent most of my life helping people tell their stories.
I’ve rewritten timelines. Softened scandals. Crafted arcs of redemption and resilience for brands, executives, celebrities — all from behind the curtain.
And yet, when it came to my story , the raw one, the quiet one that plays behind my eyes at 3 a.m. — I didn’t want to touch it. I didn’t want to go there. I didn’t even want to look at it.
Then I read What Happened to You?
It’s not a traditional self-help book. It’s a conversation that is deep, generous, and relentlessly compassionate — between Oprah Winfrey, who has spent a lifetime surviving and evolving, and Dr. Bruce Perry, a neuroscientist who explains trauma not through shame, but through science. Together, they gently pull back the curtain on why we behave the way we do, and what it means to finally stop asking “What’s wrong with me?” and start asking “What happened to me?”
I finally came at these 7 lessons that reshaped how I see myself — and made me feel, for maybe the first time, that healing wasn’t just possible… it was mine to begin.
1. You are not broken. You are adapted.
This was the first gut punch — and also the most liberating truth. The patterns I’ve developed over the years — hyper-productivity, emotional distance, control — weren’t character flaws. They were adaptations. Survival strategies. My nervous system, doing its best to protect me when I didn’t feel safe. Once I stopped seeing myself as broken, I started seeing myself with tenderness.
2. The question isn’t “Why am I like this?” — it’s “Who helped make me this way?”
This book reminded me that behavior is never random. It's rooted in experience. What we think of as “overreactions” are often echoes of pain we haven’t named. For me, that meant going back to moments I’d buried — the silence in the kitchen after my parents fought, the first time someone made me feel small in a boardroom — and realizing, Oh. That’s why.
3. We can’t think our way out of trauma.
As someone who lives in her head, this one shook me. I’ve always tried to “logic” my way through discomfort. But as Dr. Perry explains, trauma is stored in the body, not just the mind. You can’t fix a nervous system dysregulated by childhood stress just by reading books or saying affirmations. You have to feel it. Slowly. Safely. In relationship. Healing is embodied.
4. Connection is the first step to healing — not advice. Not solutions. Connection.
This hit close. In PR, we fix things. We solve crises. But healing isn’t about strategy. It’s about being with. Oprah’s reflections on being seen, really seen, as a child made me realize how few spaces I’ve allowed myself to be vulnerable in — even now. The healing begins in safe connection. Not in performance.
5. What happens to you shapes what happens within you.
We blame ourselves so often for being anxious, avoidant, reactive — but this book shows how our biology remembers everything. If you were neglected, chronically stressed, or made to feel unsafe early in life, your brain wired itself around that reality. And that’s not your fault. But it is your opportunity to grow differently now.
6. Healing isn’t linear — and it’s never too late.
This felt like a quiet balm. I’ve spent years thinking I had missed my chance — that the patterns were too deep, the armor too thick. But Oprah and Dr. Perry show over and over again that healing can happen at any age. The brain is malleable. The heart, even more so. You’re never too far gone to feel safe in your own skin again.
7. You don’t need to be “fixed.” You need to be understood.
This may be the deepest shift of all. For so long, I’ve worked to stay “on,” to keep it together, to be unshakable. But this book gave me permission to step out from behind the persona and say: “I want to be known. Not managed. Not praised. Just… known.” Because understanding — real, compassionate understanding — is where we begin to come home to ourselves.
What Happened to You? is more than a book. It’s a door. Not one you slam open in triumph — but one you gently push ajar when you're finally tired of running from yourself. It will not tell you to be strong. It will remind you that you already are — not because of how well you’ve hidden your pain, but because of how deeply you’ve survived it.
I’ve spent a lifetime controlling narratives.
This one? This one helped me begin to rewrite mine — from the inside.
If you're someone who's mastered the art of holding it all together, but secretly aches to be held yourself — this book is a safe place to begin.
Book: https://amzn.to/4m2Hjdn
Audiobook also available using the link above
