Zibby interviews author and researcher Kate Price about THIS HAPPENED TO ME, an exquisitely rendered, haunting, and transformative memoir about how she broke free of the horror that defined her childhood and created a purpose-driven life and family, on her own terms. Kate shares how she survived years of sexual abuse and trafficking by her father, her journey through PTSD, and the extraordinary healing work she’s done with trauma specialist Dr. Bessel van der Kolk. She also reflects on the solace she found in books, her decade-long investigation, and how she’s turned trauma into a groundbreaking career fighting child trafficking.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, Kate. Thank you so much for coming on Totally Booked with Zibby to talk about "This Happened to Me, A Memoir." Congratulations. 

Kate: Thank you so much and thanks for having me. 

Zibby: It's my pleasure. Powerful does not begin to describe this book. This is like a gut punch and you are such a good writer and your story is just unreal. Really unbelievable what you got through yourself and the way that you processed it and wrote about it and shared it with us. It's like genius. So thank you. Thank you for writing it and. My heart just goes out to you in every way. 

Kate: That's very kind. Thank you for your kind words. 

Zibby: Why don't you tell listeners what the book is about? 

Kate: Okay, so the book is really ultimately about healing and truth from. My father sexually abused me from a very early age until age 12 when he left our home, and during that time he also sold me for Sex to Truckers along Route 80, an interstate that runs very near my childhood home in Northern Appalachia. So the book really is about me grappling. So one, surviving that, and then two, grappling with my memory and ultimately healing. 

Zibby: Kate, how can you just sit and calmly say that, like, and you have to say it over and over again, doing publicity for this book. How does that, how are you dealing with that? 

Kate: I say it all of the time because I'm actually a researcher. That's, that's my area of study is child sex trafficking, particularly domestically, but also internationally. I, I think, for a multitude of reasons, um, I meditate every day. Um, wellness is a huge part of my life and managing my PTSD. Um, I was also extraordinarily lucky to meet Dr. Bessel VanDerKolk, the author of the Body Keeps the Score of which I am in.

Um, he's been my therapist for over, you know, for about 30 years now. We met when I was working at Harvard University and my therapist at the time saw him speak when I was in my mid twenties. Um, and I, when I was really just starting to dive into all of this. And I became one of his most successful patients with the EMDR, when that was still a very new and controversial modality.

So he helped save my life. You know, he's been very much of a guide for me and we joke that I don't see him that often now, but I joke. We joke that we are both the head of each other's mutual admiration society. 

Zibby: Aw. That's so sweet, and you wrote in detail about all of your sessions with him and how that all happened, and I found that absolutely fascinating. How, how did your body keep the score? 

Kate: How was my body? First, I just wanna say I was very, having those sessions and they were very intentional for me because I, one of the primary reasons I wrote this book was what I was healing from all of this. I needed a roadmap. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Kate: And this was all so new and overwhelming. And what was going on. And I didn't have a roadmap and I needed that. So I wanted to not, and people not just healing from sexual trauma, but really any trauma. So I wanted to be very transparent. And so in consort with Bessel, I wrote those and he signed off on them, you know? And so it was very much of a, I see it as a public service announcement in a way.

And then in terms of how my body kept the score was. Throughout childhood, I would pass the rest area where I was being, uh, where I was being trafficked. I would ha and I would just feel weird, you know? And it was, I just didn't know. But I was just in survival mode, you know, at that point. Um, and then, um, I would have flashbacks and just various po and so much of this was so spot on developmentally, you know, in adolescence, in my teens, um, in my twenties, um, I was suicidal, you know, in my, in my teens and early twenties.

Of course, you know, 'cause like I have no idea what's happening. But then really once I moved to Boston, um, and Cambridge in 12 step programs called the Geographical Cure. You know, it's like you're getting, I had that. Distance, physical and increasing emotional distance, and my body just felt safe.

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Kate: And I felt safe, you know, for the first time I started working at Harvard, like my academic career was really starting and I was just building my own life. And it all came flooding out because it was, it was safe and it was terrifying. And yet, by that time I really had the scaffolding built around me when all of that happened.

I could pick up the phone, you know, and say I'm in danger. And then had a plan, you know, with, um, vessel, but also with my other therapist. And I still have those things, you know, to a degree. Um, in terms of just, um, you know, it's in the book. My husband and I call it Kate, management skills. You know, it's like so much of it is how to, man, I still just have to manage my PTSD, you know, every single day.

Zibby: Oh my gosh. Well, the way that you wrote about all of this and took us with you, and just to back up with the abuse, for listeners who aren't aware, your dad would also inject you or have you drink medicine. At the end of the book, you weren't exactly sure what it was. We don't know. But something that he found perhaps is his, he worked in a hospital, something he managed to procure that made you black out and you know, pass out theoretically the whole time you're not even sure.

So that is how he was able, and you write in the book about. Him waking up in the morning in your, in your nightgown with like no underwear. Oh my gosh, Kate. It was just, 'cause you were so young and I hate, I, I don't wanna like, you know, overdramatize 'cause this is your life and you know, you wrote about it very factually and whatever.

It's just as a reader, and I'm sure you'll experience this time and again like it is. The reader's gonna be processing and reflecting it back to you sort of the way. So I'm sure you're ready for that. But anyway, I'm falling into that. I'm falling into that camp. One of the things that you wrote about, which struck a chord with me, we were joking ahead of this about like what. In our lives because, so similar, but you wrote about Judy Bloom and how those books got you through. Can I just read this little passage you wrote about that? 

Kate: Absolutely. 

Zibby: Okay. You said, I found, well, I said, okay. You wrote, this is chapter 11. The idea of sex intimacy and the emotions around them are confusing for any adolescent. In my case, my mind dissolved into a morass around these topics. I couldn't square the explicit pornographic images my father gleefully showed me in private with the anatomical health films about puberty. My classmates and I watched red-faced and embarrassed silence. It felt shameful to view either of these yet.

I wasn't exactly sure why. To bridge the gap. I, like millions of other kids, discovered Judy Bloom. Her books didn't just comfort me. They helped keep me alive and were among the few things that kept me going. I found relief and reassurance in the way she celebrated life's messiness and addressed unspeakable topics such as depression, hormones, sexual desire, and sibling rivalry. She was authentic, real, and her courageous characters made me. Feel less alone. Oh my gosh. Talk about that and the solace you found in books. 

Kate: Just, I get teary, like even hearing that research shows that children who are enduring anything in terms of tra trauma, you know, difficult life situations, if there is one safe adult in their life, it increases or decreases their risk of suicidality, depression, you know, all of these things. And people all always say to me, who was that person for you in your life? And for me it was Judy Bloom. I did, she was some amorphous person out there and she really did help save my life. I mean, that's what you asked earlier in terms of like, how does your body keep the score?

All of this, you know, Judy Bloom was really my first. Safe adult, truly, and to have her voice in books just meant the absolute world to me. I mean, books saved my life in high school. Then it was JD Salinger who was a complicated individual, you know, in the, but reading the Catcher in the Rye. It was the first time I read a trauma novel.

I mean, that's what it's really about is trauma in my experience. And so just those words, it gave me access to, I knew that there was someone saying out there, um, and someone who saw me and knew, you know, later. Oh, I forget what year it came out, but her book letters to Judy, you know, kids were writing her that phenomenal documentary that just came out.

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Kate: You know, she developed really strong interpersonal relationships with some children. It never even occurred to me to write to her. I mean, I just wouldn't have done that. But to know that other people did and that she took that seriously. Came across the page, like even though I knew it on some level, and she was just a level of comfort and safety for me, and I felt her presence, you know, in the library, in my town library, that was also my safe space that helped keep me alive.

Zibby: Have you told Judy Bloom that? 

Kate: Not yet. I've tried. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. Can I connect you? I just had her on my podcast. 

Kate: Oh my gosh. I would absolutely love that. I'm, I would, I mean, I probably will be a blubbering idiot. Like so many people just dissolve at her feet, but. 

Zibby: Well, let me try. I'll, I'll, I'll email you both.

Kate: I would be honored. I would be so honored. 

Zibby: She should, she should know. I mean, it's one thing to know that your book reaches millions, right? That's just like a sentence. Yeah. But it's the individual effects of the books. Isn't this why? Everybody writes like, you're gonna have this with your readers too.

Kate: Connection. Absolutely. I mean, this is, uh, one thing I really know is that it's been said, you know, isolation is the glue that holds oppression in place. That was very much the case, um, of what my father did to me. And sissy, my sister, really kept us isolated from one another. And books I really do believe are ultimately about connection.

We are. A species of meaning makers. We are a species of storytellers. Um, and so the very fact that I have survived all I've survived and can write about it, how could I not, it also helps that I'm married to a journalist, who very early in our marriage was like, who, what really showed me the power of journalism?

And this was also kind of the, around the time that the spotlight had come out and. So I could just really see, you know, the power of journalism. And then once I worked with a journalist for 10 years and we were able to really get to the bottom of my story, it really became time, you know, to write the book as well.

So having him along with me as a journalist, and then he's also an author, um, sports a little bit, you know, lighter, I'm a huge baseball fan. Um, so that's where we really connect. But it's, he's really, that's really helped me feel very. Very familiar and comfortable with the journalistic process as well as the publishing industry.

Zibby: Well, both of those that you wrote about in the book are, were such a big relief to, to me, as the reader reading your life, because of course you end up in a series of horrific relationships in the aftermath of. "What happened with your father?" And then when you met your husband, I was like, oh, yay. He's such a nice guy.

I hope they end up together. Like, let's see what happens. And then you do, you know, spoiler, but it's in your bio, but so whatever. But I'm just so glad you were able to make a meaningful relationship. With somebody. So awesome. And then the journalist is also another key, Janelle, I think her name's Janelle.

Kate: Janelle Nanos. 

Zibby: Yes. Janelle Nanos, the two of you. Like going through it together and the patience and all the steps you had to take to kind of build this case and the vindication you felt and you were like, oh my gosh, it wasn't just me, I didn't make this up. Even though you knew you didn't make it up, but just when you found the proof, oh my gosh.

Like how does that feel now? And also. What about, like, any sort of prosecution? Your father at the end of the book is denying everything. Is there anything next? 

Kate: Let me take that in a few steps. 

Zibby: Okay. Okay. 

Kate: Um, one, Janelle is phenomenal. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Kate: Uh, she, uh, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for the article that she wrote about our 10 year journey together. Um, and the fact that it took us 10 years. It was so important because so many things needed to happen. Uh, during that time. Meet the Me Too movement happened, Sandusky happened. Jerry Sandusky. Um, I grew up 45 minutes east of State College. And so all of these things that we think, you know, people are just making it up.

You know, like people just are beginning to believe survivors more and more, which to me is the biggest takeaway when people. Read my story or read any story and they say they feel so helpless. You know, it's like, what? Um, what can I do? And for me, it is truly believe survivors. It has been said that everyone knows a victim, but no one knows a perpetrator, you know?

And so it's like just that ability to hide and cover up. Is such an important part of how sexual violence or any violence or any domination control domestic violence continues to happen. So that silence and silencing victims is incredibly important. And then in terms of what's next, there's really nothing next for now.

The end of the book is, is, is how, is how everything is ending. And yet I'm also thrilled to say that I continue to spend time in my hometown, um, doing a lot of advocacy work on policy, on practice. I'm on various task forces, um, policy advisory groups because ultimately I cannot abandon the children in my hometown the way that my sister and I were abandoned.

Zibby: Wow. And your town really does become sort of complicit in this, in a way, in the silence and the, the people who suspected but didn't say anything and the culture, I mean, it wasn't just you. I mean, this is generations of behavior, suicidality in your family. I mean, this is. A lot. And, uh, there are just some places where these types of things are just not talked about and sanctioned. And it's hard to believe in today's day and age, but it's, but it's true. 

Kate: It is true. And I think there's definitely a regional aspect to Appalachia. It is. Very isolated. It is very clannish. I mean, we're mostly Scots and Irish, you know, ancestors. So all of that, as we know with epigenetics, it's very deep in our bones.

It's survival. And yet ultimately as I've learned, as I've spoken to, you know, to more and more people, family secrets are ubiquitous. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Kate: Um, I love Danny Shapiro's, uh, family Secrets podcast. And it just shows, you know, that that's really it. That happens everywhere. And so much of it is about family reputation and you know, all of these and I don't wanna, you know, go down that rabbit hole.

But while the particular kind of violence and the particular kind of, the way the family secrets were kept, I think is very regional and specific to Appalachia. I don't think that they are special, you know, in any way, shape or form. Family secrets are everywhere and that's another big reason why I wanted to do the book.

Um, because I cannot tell you how many survivors I have met, um, around my age or a little bit older, who have lost a sibling to suicide because their family members would not believe them. So I just really wrote this. Ultimately, I really wrote it for. Anyone who's endured trauma or is enduring trauma, but really in terms of familial, commercial, sexual exploitation of children, survivors and, and victims, it is so isolating and you are so, uh, what would be the word?

Uh. Gaslit. You know, I'm just so, those secrets are so at the core, and this is your family. I mean, these are the people who are supposed to be protecting you. This is the people that society assumes are protecting you. And then if it's quite the opposite, boy, are the odds really stacked against you? 

Zibby: Oh my gosh.

Can I read one more, one more section? 

Kate: Of course. I've been honored. 

Zibby: Okay. My Al-Anon meeting revelation that my abuse wasn't my fault, had slammed me like a tsunami, rushing in from outside of my consciousness. But this, this, it washed over me slowly, like a calm, rising tide eroding the shoddy foundation of a beachfront mansion that had been built to house my father's.

Pulsing secrets, my relentless work to heal had eaten away at the facade, delivering me to this moment. All of the work I had done to heal must have opened my mind's floodgates, finally secure enough to face the truth. The house of lies was falling away. And with that, the ground shuttered as each room broke free filling with frothy waves, carrying the reality of my exploitation.

I tried to fly up into the corner dissociating like I had done in my bedroom whenever my father abused me as a child. Yet the corners kept disappearing as the rooms collapsed around me, freed by my readiness to face the veracity of my childhood. Ugh. It's so powerful. How do you feel like going back and revisiting these moments, these like, and the collapse moment that we kind of knew was coming all through the book and then finally like whoosh comes, how do you feel?

Kate: You know, it, it, I feel a tremendous sense of relief. The book just poured out of me. It really, it took me about three years to write the prologue, um, which I wrote during my investigation with Janelle. Um, I would write work on it in my hometown, and that took three years, you know, but then really once janelle and I finished our investigation and I was just really putting things together. It all just poured right out of me. It reminds me so much of, um, the tremendous work of Melissa Fibo, who I love so much in terms of writing and getting, you know, just that, that. The corporeal experience, the bodily experience of writing and how much we hold.

And I do, I see a trainer and I do a lot of stretching and things, and so just even her teaching me that release of what we hold in our fascia and what we hold in our hips and what we hold in our feet. And so all of that just being. Very difficult because for so long as that passage mentions, you know, I would just associate, I would go fly out of my body. And so learning to stay in my body and then release it in a healthy way instead of just disappearing, um, has been a huge part of that process. 

Zibby: And you've become, in your professional life, just incredibly accomplished. You are a fighter. You fight child trafficking worldwide. You are like a total badass. Talk about your career and how you've turned your trauma into. Such a forceful professional existence. 

Kate: Thank you. So I am an associate researcher, I'm sorry, a, so this is a new position for me, an associate research scientist, uh, at the Wellesley Centers for Women, which is a research institute at Wellesley College.

And the basis of our work here, of all of the work done here is research. And action. So it is, um, not, not to say being an academic, you know, in terms of just doing research and then publishing scholarly research that maybe five or 10 or 40 people are going to read. For me it was really how do we create scientific knowledge that then does get published in journals, but then can translate to policy and practice.

And so that is incredibly important to me. Um, I'm very honored to say that to myself and my, um, mentor and colleague. We are embarking on the first that I know of the first national study on familial commercial sexual exploitation in the United States. So we're doing some pilot studying, uh, work now, and then we're seeking funding for a larger five year study that really will get to not only the victimology, not only to get to victims' experiences, but talking to non-offending family members, talking to traffickers, to buyers, to service providers.

And to, uh, criminal ju uh, criminal legal system agents as well, and doing a mapping to really see how does this happen? I know how this happened now through my experience. I know it anecdotally from the, uh, amazing, uh, community of survivors that I am a part of. Um, but now I want to, the intention is, and we will create scientific, empirical knowledge about how this happens.

Zibby: That's amazing. That's so great. Oh my gosh. 

Kate: Thank you. 

Zibby: Um. 

Kate: And can I also just say, I would've been a sociologist no matter what had happened to me. I see my need, the need to find chicken pucker when I'm six years old. Like that's my first sociological interview, you know? 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Kate: It's like I just needed to know that truth that sparked very early in me, and it's just a huge part of who I am. And as I discuss research. Has been a huge part of my healing. And so that's, for me, that's why it's so, you know, I think everyone's healing path is so individual and for me it was, it's just the way my mind works. And so that was, that's what I did and that's what I continued to do. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. Well, I wish you could go back to the girl and her friend who snuck into the chuck and turned on the CV radio and all that and made that first crackly conversation.

Fast forward to now, like if only you could fast forward through some of the heartbreak in the intervening years. But how, how vindicating. 

Kate: Very much, very much. 

Zibby: Um, at the end of the book, you talked about wanting to open a bookstore, mill girl books. Is that what's going on with that? 

Kate: We're waiting right now. Um, and you know, I don't wanna give away too much, but for me it is a way. To continue that legacy of, and not just a bookstore. I do, um, writing workshops in my hometown at the library. That was so important to me. And just that continuation of how can I continue that legacy of making. Books and writing available to children.

Uh, to children. I could never afford books really when I was a kid. I would, you know, um, my Judy Bloom every once in a while, you know? Um, but then once my father left and we could, you know, didn't even have enough food to eat, books were not on the table, you know, so for me to be able to provide books. For kids who want them, who can't afford them.

That is another way that I see, um, that I can do direct service, um, in my hometown. And that's incredibly, incredibly important to me. 

Zibby: So what advice can you give to someone who is going through something they don't know if they can bear? 

Kate: I think the biggest thing is you're not alone. You might be physically alone because you have been isolated by people around you, by people who are controlling you.

Like pe people know exactly what they're doing, um, in terms of that because they know your power and the power of people around you. And so. Well, we always say in our family, in our immediate family, me, my husband, and my son is bet on yourself. Um, we're not gamblers. Um, and at the same time, you know, as my husband or journalist, myself as an aspiring academic and now our son, um, has his own entrepreneurial dreams, you know, it's bet on yourself.

Just know you'll get through it. You might not have the answer right now. You might not even have the answer for 10 years. You might not even have the answer for 30 or 40 or 50 years, but it's there. And it will reveal it. It will reveal itself to you when things are safe. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh, Kate, this happened to me, a memoir. Oh my gosh. Congratulations. Bravo and thank you. 

Kate: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. 

Zibby: Thank you.