--you guys so much.
Appreciate you.
Yes.
Welcome back.
We are talking today about mental health and trauma.
OK, so Oprah, how did you turn your pain into purpose?
Oh, I love that.
Well, before the pain became a purpose,
it was just an acknowledgment of what had happened to me.
And one of the things we talk about in the what happened
to you book is that anything that has happened to you--
and I wanted to just make this point to everybody--
there's not a Black woman in this room who hasn't been
through something that helped her build strength,
and then something else that helped you build strength,
and then something else that helped you build strength.
I mean, sometimes you go through so much you say,
God, don't teach me nothing else new today.
I don't need no more strength building.
But this is what I know is that strength times
strength times strength times strength,
every time you got stronger, you were building power.
Because strength times strength times strength times strength
equals powerful.
So we're sitting in a room amongst ourselves,
with all of these powerful women who have their stories of what
happened to you that you can now turn
into post-traumatic wisdom.
You take what-- so-- so what I was able to do
was to take what had happened to me
and to use it as an empathy builder for myself
and for other people.
And it is my empathy and connection
that has allowed me to be the woman that I am today.
And so anything that has happened to you, if you are
willing to learn from it, to open up and no longer allow
the stigma and shame to cause you to hide your secrets,
but to know that your vulnerability is where
your real strength lies, and take that pain
and turn it into something meaningful for yourself.
And as Maya used to say, I wouldn't take nothing
for my journey now, not even the sexual abuse,
the sexual assault.
You know, when I was raped, I didn't even know--
I didn't even know what a penis was.
And like so many other people in this room who were also
sexually assaulted when they were young,
I didn't tell anybody because I knew it would be turned on me.
I knew I was not in a safe environment
where other adults would trust my word,
and so I kept it to myself until I was literally
on an "Oprah Winfrey Show."
Somebody shared their story of abuse,
and I was like, I thought I was the only one.
I thought I was the only person who had been raped at 9,
and molested until--
until I was 14.
So I think being able to take your pain
and turn it into purpose and power
begins first with being able to empathize
with other people who've been through the same kind of pain.
And everything that's happened to you
has also happened for you, if you allow it to be.
There's not one thing that has happened to you that you cannot
now turn into something that is useful
and meaningful in the life that you are now leading forward.
That is what I know for sure.
That's powerful.
PTW-- Post Traumatic Wisdom.
OPRAH WINFREY: Wisdom.
We have to-- we just have to get it out there, yes, wisdom.
I want to run with that.
I want to take that and carry it with me always.