This book was written by Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D. and Oprah Winfrey and had a beautiful layout. The two authors interacted throughout the book about the subtitle topics of trauma, resilience, and healing. I learned a lot about trauma, dysregulation and how to return to regulation that I could apply to myself in relation to my own stress and trauma. I found value in Chapter 9, Relational Hunger in the Modern World. Dr. Perry said, "We're losing the ability to calmly consider someone else's opinion, reflect, and attempt to see things from their point of view." Oprah then responded with the term "cancel culture". Dr. Perry suggested that we would benefit from repairing ruptures and that we should ideally reconnect and grow. "When you walk away, everybody loses...Mature human interactions involve efforts to understand people who are different from you." "Our society's transgenerational social fabric is fraying. We're disconnecting." "The acknowledgement of one human being by another is what bonds us. Asking "What happened to you?" expands the human connection." At the very end of the book on the last page of the epilogue, it says that all who have been broken and scarred by trauma have the chance to turn those experiences into post-traumatic wisdom. An excellent book to learn about trauma.

I could never have imagined that simply slightly changing the question you ask could make such a profound difference. Instead of often-asked question, "What's wrong with you?" Oprah and Dr. Bruce Perry talk about the importance of asking, "What happened to you?" As children, it's the thing that "happened" to us that often have the greatest long-term impact on our outcomes. This book dives deep into helping us have a better understanding of brain science and how our early traumas affect our brains as they develop. One of the most enlightening details is Dr. Perry's description of how our brain processes our experiences, starting with the brainstem (which has no ability to differentiate the threat it receives now from a similar experience had in childhood) and then proceeds all the way through the brain to the highest-functioning levels of the cerebral cortex. I think this book is a must-read.

This was one of the best books and I would even go as far to say one of the books that changed my life as it relates to how I look trauma, understanding myself, the world around me and how we are all connected. Thank you Dr. Perry & Oprah for this book!

The photo I shared is how my personal childhood trauma played out as an adult when I was 47. This book validates the experiences I had, and that in fact, I'm not an exception at all. My hope and prayer is that with this being on Oprah's list of 2021 best gifts that more folks will take the time to understand how in fact their past can and does play out in their life and in their relationships with others. The best gift any of us can give our children is to break generational cycles of abuse, neglect, and negative patterns. We can't do that without an understanding of how our brains work to deal with trauma we have experienced in our lives. Dr. Perry and Oprah take such a complicated topic and give concrete examples to help folks who haven't had exposure to this topic have a better understanding. You more than likely have had adverse experiences in your life that impact your current relationships. This book will help you have a better understanding of how past experiences play out in current relationships. Additionally, there are examples of how folks have overcome great adversities to go on and thrive. What happens to us doesn't have to define us or our future, we each need to process our past, understand how a wrong, injustice, or adversity, has shaped our worldview, and then make the decision to learn and grow from the experience. It's not easy, and I don't think in the book they allude to the fact that it is, it's very difficult, but as I've come to learn in life, probably like most folks, the rewards come after the difficult work/journeys. Nothing worthwhile in life is usually easy. My personal experience, I was brought up in a middle class white family, graduated college at 23, and on to work full-time, a fulfilling career, until my childhood trauma was triggered when I felt bullied by a $3trillion company. I suffered from dissociative trauma, as a child, fight or flight were not options to the significant abuse I suffered. This bully triggered the bully from my childhood that significantly abused me and I took all the anger from my childhood bully and placed it on this company. Whether I was right or wrong in feeling bullied is moot, book will point to that. I resigned from a career at this company of 11 years, a good career, and went on to file multiple lawsuits consuming two years of my life, the picture shows I took the case all the way to The Supreme Court of the US, after I was rejected in every other court. You see the child who did not have a voice when she was being abused, was determined this time to be heard, hence all the lawsuits begging someone to see how I was being bullied. I wasn't successful, every court denied to allow me to go to discovery, which just again, reactivated my childhood trauma of not being heard. This started for me in 2014, it would take me 4 years to walk through the doors of a trauma counselor where I would connect all the dots and be flooded with past memories, experience PTSD, body sensations, and here I am 3 years later, healthier and whole, but it was the most difficult process I've ever experienced. I was lucky, I had an incredible support system in my husband and friends but I can easily see how this type of event would cripple anyone and how they could be ostracized by friends and family, not that I didn't experience some of that, but those who were there for me helped me overcome. So, yes, I recommend the book because all of us have experienced adversities or trauma and most folks have no idea how it is playing out in their lives today and how they are passing it down to their children. If you take the time to be openminded, reflective, and honest, you will in fact take something away that will make your life better. Thank you Dr. Perry and Oprah, for all the work you have done in this field for decades. I can't imagine how difficult it has to be to hear so many of these stories, live it, and know it, and see how slow our society has been to address mental health. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Oprah for putting it on your 2021 list, and thank you too for sharing your personal story, how you struggled and resolved your relationship with your mother, it moved me to tears, for many reasons. May God bless you each abundantly and may His hand be upon the mission of expanding this topic of What Happened To you? Leigh Ann Harris North Carolina

This book was suggested to me by my therapist. I wasn’t sure if I would like how the book was laid out. It is reading conversations Oprah has with a psychiatrist. I loved reading these conversations. The explanations by the psychiatrist are well done and easy to understand. This has helped me with trauma in my own life.