How Oprah saved my life and my book

Oprah is so much part of our world, especially for us women. It is almost as though her graciousness and blessings have become sewn into the ether.

I was fortunate enough to receive one of those blessings late on Saturday night, right out of the blue. It was 8th June.

Her blessing saved my life and my newly published book that I had relegated to the bonfire in the wooded area near the house I was staying in this Spring in the Netherlands.

Here is the story. Last night I was watching Oprah, she is talking with some of the stars from the series, ‘Big Lies, Little Lies’. The group started talking about the sexual abuse of women. Then Oprah says that ‘shame’ is one of the worst feelings for a woman has been sexually abused.

At that very moment it is as though everyone in the group had vanished. Oprah it seems is talking directly to me, it is uncanny as though she knows somehow that I am out there, that I am listening , it is her message just for me.

While she is still speaking, her head turned towards me somehow, her words go straight to my heart. Yes, it is the ‘shame’ that I cannot bear about the sexual abuse that I experienced as a child. I cannot bear it.

I did not know that it was this ‘shame’ that cut me off from the book that I had only just published three months ago.  Twelve weeks ago my book ‘Trap, Prey, lust’, was published in London, then there were features about my story in the Sunday Mirror, a two page spread about my childhood of sexual abuse. The man who raped me was my father and he was part of an occult club so that I was also taken to this club and shamed by other men. The details in the feature were horrific. My book is a novel but is based on my own story of childhood sexual abuse. Then there were features in Chat Magazine, Lapidus, the Daily Mail and still the articles are coming.

For two months I go away to the Northern parts of the Netherlands, to stay in a cottage in the forest and write poetry. I do not want to know about the book, I want to believe that somehow this did not happen to me. All my dreams that the book would create greater awareness in this world were shattered. I was not strong enough. I could not believe that I had created this monster of a book that is so disturbing, probably one of the most substantive texts on sexual abuse and I had carried out historical research at the British Library.

And so, one day, I go out into the forest and I burn the book. I make a fire and burn every page.  I want to be released from it as though it was never part of me.

And then when I hear Oprah’s words, clear as a bell, they heal me in an instant and again within twenty minutes I have again embraced the mission of the book. Her words heal because when one becomes conscious and aware of what is causing the pain, what the pain is, one can live again. And so, the feeling was like this and all the trapped energy in my body started to rejoice as it had at last been set free.

Now I am able to fully embrace the book again, it is written with my blood, my heart; it is not a monster but a terrible story of the sexual abuse of a young child, the neglect, the shame and finally the awakening to a new life.

Thank you, Oprah, for your words, for being in that moment so completely, for your love and for giving me back my life and my book.

One day, I know, I will get to meet you.

Carolyn Shanti