This Happened to Me

Kate Price grew up in a small mill town in Pennsylvania with her sister and parents, her ancestors having settled in the area back in the 1700s. Price was destined to leave, and in doing so, to break one of many, unwritten rules when it came to unbroken cycles of poverty, violence, addiction, mental illness, and abuse.

At the insistence of her mother - Price escaped and started a new life in Boston. It was here that she also discovered and reconciled the full truth of her dark past and what had happened to her through a series of hazy flashbacks accompanied by a "chilling of her blood and uncomfortable feeling in her bones."

Overcome with unexplainable grief she sought out Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, a trauma specialist, to help her understand what these flashbacks meant. When Price, whose brain had been protecting her by shutting down these horrific memories, felt safe enough, she discovered what that darkness that lay within her was - that her father had abused and trafficked her as a child.

Flooded with questions, a dedicated researcher and academic, Price grappled with what had been revealed. And so began a 10-year quest with a journalist from the Boston Globe, to prove what Price knew to be her truth. With many trips back to the hometown she thought she had left forever, the two eventually found the hard-earned proof Price had been searching for.

Now, in her exquisitely rendered, transformative memoir, Price describes how she broke free of that which had defined her childhood, to go on to create a purpose-driven life and family, on her own terms. From victim to advocate, from fearful child to empowered adult, and from despair to triumph, This Happened to Me is a story of astonishing resilience and breathtaking determination.