Transform Your Understanding of Trauma, Healing, and the Power of Resilience

About the Book

This Happened to Me: A Reckoning is an extraordinarily powerful memoir that chronicles one woman’s journey from devastating childhood trauma to healing, advocacy, and purpose. Kate Price escaped cycles of poverty, violence, and abuse that plagued her family for generations, built a new life in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and earned her PhD in sociology. Yet unexplainable grief and haunting flashbacks kept pulling her back to a past she couldn’t fully remember. Working with renowned trauma specialist Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, Price embarked on a ten-year investigation into her own childhood that would ultimately reveal the horrifying truth and set her on a path to profound healing.

About the Author

Kate Price is an Associate Research Scientist at the Wellesley Centers for Women at Wellesley College and an internationally recognized child sex trafficking expert whose groundbreaking work has influenced state-level children’s human rights legislation. She holds a master’s degree in Gender/Cultural Studies from Simmons College and earned her PhD in sociology from the University of Massachusetts Boston. Price is a member of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children Child Sex Trafficking Expert Working Group and dedicating her life to ensuring children receive the protection and services she never had. She lives in Massachusetts with her family and is opening Mill Girl Books, an independent bookstore in her Pennsylvania hometown.

Who Is This Book For?

This memoir is essential reading for anyone who values courageous truth-telling and the resilience of the human spirit. Whether you’re a survivor seeking validation and hope, a mental health professional working with trauma patients, someone who loved memoirs like Educated or The Glass Castle, or simply a reader who appreciates beautifully crafted, transformative storytelling—this book offers profound insights into survival, healing, and advocacy. It’s particularly valuable for those interested in understanding trauma recovery, EMDR therapy, and how one person can break generational cycles to create meaningful change.

What You’ll Gain from This Book

Readers will witness an unflinching yet compassionate exploration of childhood trauma, the complex journey of recovering suppressed memories, and the painstaking detective work required to uncover truth. You’ll discover how education, therapy, and community can become pathways to healing, understand the neuroscience of trauma through real-life experience, and be inspired by one woman’s determination to transform her pain into purpose. Most importantly, you’ll come away with a profound sense of hope about the human capacity for resilience and the power of breaking silence to protect future generations.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Q: Is This Happened to Me similar to Educated by Tara Westover?
Yes, readers who loved Educated, The Glass Castle, and Know My Name will find similar themes of overcoming difficult childhoods, escaping poverty and abuse, and pursuing education as liberation. Kate Price’s memoir adds the unique dimension of recovered memory and investigative journalism as she uncovers her own trauma with help from Dr. Bessel van der Kolk.

Q: Does this book contain triggering content about childhood abuse?
This memoir does address childhood sexual abuse, trauma, and trafficking in a direct but compassionate way. Price writes with clarity and purpose rather than graphic detail. If you’re a survivor or sensitive to these topics, please review trigger warnings and consider reading with support from a therapist or trusted friend.

Q: How is Kate Price connected to The Body Keeps the Score?
Kate Price’s story is featured in Dr. Bessel van der Kolk’s bestselling book The Body Keeps the Score. She worked with van der Kolk through EMDR therapy to process her trauma and recover suppressed memories. This Happened to Me is Price’s full story told in her own voice.

Q: What makes this trauma memoir different from others?
Beyond surviving and healing, Kate Price returned to her Appalachian hometown to become an internationally recognized expert on child trafficking and advocate for legislative change. The memoir includes a decade-long investigative journalism collaboration with the Boston Globe that helped piece together what happened to her, making it both deeply personal and rigorously researched.