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In 1990, Oprah hosted a healing childhood trauma meditation that had people in tears in two minutes

Oprah had people opening up about trauma years before it was commonplace.

via OWN Network/YouTube

Oprah's "Childhood Wounds Seminar."

Oprah Winfrey was a pioneer when it came to breaking taboos surrounding trauma, therapy and self-help. She also put her career on the line by coming out about being abused as a child, years before it was commonplace for celebrities to speak about their trauma.

In September 1990, “The Oprah Winfrey Show” aired an iconic episode titled “Childhood Wounds Seminar,” featuring educator and motivational speaker John Bradshaw. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, Bradshaw was a popular guest on television talk shows as a “psycho-vangelist” who combined elements of developmental psychology, touches of philosophy and theology, and a flair for the dramatic to help his patients and the studio audience.

Bradshaw wrote multiple bestsellers including, “Healing the Shame That Binds You” (1988) and “Homecoming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child” (1990). He passed away in 2016 at 82.

In this episode, Bradshaw led Oprah’s audience in a 7-minute guided meditation where he asked them to revisit themselves in their homes as children and rescue them from a traumatic situation. At the two-minute mark, audience members begin to visibly weep as they look their childhood selves in the eyes.

"I’m the one that wrote the letter and I'm coming to get you. I want you to come home with me. I know better than anybody what you've been through,” Bradshaw asks the audience members to tell their younger selves.

"And if it scares you to leave with me, then you can stay here, I'll come visit you,” he continued. “But if you're willing to leave, go get your little bag packed." He then asked the audience to visualize themselves taking the child from the traumatic house and bringing them into a life of safety.

“You have to leave that home.”

“You have a power greater than your parents.”

“Welcome to the world; I'm so glad you're here.”

"We're gonna have fun together, and I love you just the way you are."

@chatswithchass

Just because someone is “family” doesnt mean they can treat someone anyways they want. #chatswithchass

Even though the episode first aired nearly 33 years ago, it still affects people in a deep way. Recently, the clip was shared on TikTok by Anonymousally98 as a post titled, "How I healed my wounded inner child in 7 minutes w an episode of Oprah."

The video received over 4 million views and got passionate responses from viewers.

"Bawled my eyes out. I needed this. Thank you so much for sharing," Kayresha Naidoo-Martin commented on the post. "I balled like a f***ing baby!! I had my husband and 2 boys waiting for me. I now see that I raise them the way I always wanted to be but never was," Ashlee Marine added.

"I brought my inner child around the corner to meet my son and see his face and how much he would have loved little me," Erika Michele wrote.

In hindsight, it’s beautiful that Winfrey had the tenacity in the dog-eat-dog world of daytime television to create programming that was not only entertaining but healing at the same time. It’s a testament to her incredible talents as a broadcaster and producer that, so many years later, her work still resonates with millions.







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Oprah nailed why dishonesty has eroded our nation. But she gave us hope too.

Oprah gave a commencement speech at USC's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, and her words were everything we need right now.

I don't know how, but Oprah always seems to be able to diagnose what's ailing America and offer us a prescription to dull the pain — one that somehow isn't too hard to swallow.

Am I suggesting she run for president? No. But this speech did a lot to convince me she'd make a pretty kickass leader of the free world.

I'm a middle-aged adult, and I got as much out of this speech as any 20-something did, guaranteed. These are life lessons for us all, young and old, rich and poor, citizen or statesman.

I recommend watching the whole speech, but here are some of the highlights.

Photo by Leon Bennett/Getty Images.

The bad news and the good news: Everything sucks right now, but we can fix it.

Oprah began by pulling no punches about our current reality.

"Everything around us — including and in particular the internet and social media — is now being used to erode trust in our institutions, interfere in our elections, and wreak havoc on our infrastructure," she said. "It hands advertisers a map to our deepest desires, it enables misinformation to run rampant, attention spans to run short, and false stories from phony sites to run circles around major news outlets."

Welp. That about covers that.

Then she offered up the good news. "The solution is each and every one of you. Because you will become the new editorial gatekeepers, an ambitious army of truth-seekers who will arm yourselves with the intelligence, with the insight and the facts necessary to strike down deceit."

Yes! Yay, real journalism!

Photo by Leon Bennett/Getty Images.

Then she addressed the way we interact with one another and how we can respond to this moment.

"This is what I know: The problem is everybody is meeting hysteria with more hysteria, and then we just are all becoming hysterical," she said, going on to say we must avoid getting "locked in" to a cycle of trying to resist in ways that don't work.

And how are we supposed to do that, Oprah?

"We're supposed to see through it and then transcend it. That is how you overcome hysteria," she said. "... Use this moment to encourage you, to embolden you, and to literally push you into the rising of your life."

Of course, even Oprah knows that's not always easy.

"I understand how it's so easy to become disillusioned," she said, "so tempting to allow apathy to set in because anxiety is being broadcast on 157 channels, 24 hours a day, all night long. And everybody I know is feeling it."

Nonetheless, she encouraged the audience to remain strong.

"These times are here to let us know that we need to take a stand for our right to have hope, and we need to take a stand with every ounce of wit and courage we can muster."

Finally, she laid down some big truth about truth.

"Here's what you have to do," she said. "You make the choice every day, every single day, to exemplify honesty. Because the truth — let me tell you something about the truth — the truth exonerates and it convicts. It disinfects, and it galvanizes. The truth has always been and will always be our shield against corruption, our shield against greed and despair. The truth is our saving grace."

OMG. I love truth. And I love Oprah. It's basically a tie.

Watch the full speech — seriously, watch it! — below:

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Benedict Cumberbatch has one simple way men can help fix pay inequity.

Doctor Strange is making some really important magic happen in Hollywood.

Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays the Marvel superhero doctor, is getting vocal about equal pay and calling on all men in the industry to make sacrifices when their female counterparts aren't given it.

Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images.

In an interview with Radio Times Magazine on May 13, 2018, he laid out one simple way men can make sure female co-workers behind the scenes are being treated and getting paid equally.

"Equal pay and a place at the table are the central tenets of feminism," he told the magazine. "Look at your quotas. Ask what women are being paid, and say, 'If she's not paid the same as the men, I'm not doing it.'"

The internet was pretty stoked about Cumberbatch's statement.

Cumberbatch is no stranger to standing up for what's right. He's used his platform to speak out against the British government's abuse of civil liberties, went off on world governments for not doing more to help Syrian refugees, and participated in the Ice Bucket Challenge to raise funds for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) awareness. In short, he's been a bit of a superhero long before his Marvel days.  

Photo by Tim P. Whitby/Getty Images for BFI.

Given the pervasive pay gap between men and women in Hollywood, Cumberbatch's bold statements are more important than ever.    

Nationwide, women make about $0.85 to a man's dollar. In Hollywood, women are often paid less than their male co-stars evenin cases when a woman plays a leading role.

TV host, actress, and producer Oprah Winfrey spoke eloquently about challenging the status quo in an interview for the Time Firsts project. Winfrey discussed recognizing the pay inequality as she was leading her talkshow, "Oprah." New to the industry herself at the time, she wanted to make sure her employees — many of whom were women trying to find their way in the industry — were being paid equally. She approached a producer who was reluctant about raising salaries for the young women.

"He actually said to me, 'They're only girls. They're a bunch of girls. What do they need more money for?'" she explained.  "I go, 'Well, either they're gonna get raises, or I'm gonna sit down. I will not work unless they get paid.' And so they did."

Cumberbatch's production company, SunnyMarch, is largely run by women and aims to produce and support more female-focused dramas.    

"I'm proud that [partner] Adam [Ackland] and I are the only men in our production company; our next project is a female story with a female lens about motherhood, in a time of environmental disaster," Cumberbatch said. "If it's centered around my name, to get investors, then we can use that attention for a raft of female projects. Half the audience is female!"    

Photo by David Livingston/Getty Images.

As a straight, white actor, Cumberbatch's use of his privilege sets an important example for other actors in similar positions.

To achieve true pay equality in Hollywood, more male actors — particularly those who inherently have more privilege than others — should continue using their platforms and resources to support other women, make public calls for change, and use their networks to push for systematic change. Only then can we make true, systematic change from the ground up.

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Oprah is tirelessly working to get people to pay attention to this life-changing issue.

Childhood bullying is an epidemic in this country. Around 28% of students experience it first hand, and nearly 70% witness it happen.

When we hear about it, we feel sympathy for the kids being bullied, as we should, but don't often give this care and consideration to the perpetrators. Instead, our gut reaction is to ask questions.

"Why did they do this?"

"What is wrong with them?"

"What did the parents do/not do?"

But if we hope to improve the mental health of our children, the adults they become, and the communities that raise them, we need to ask better questions. Journalist, philanthropist, and TV legend Oprah Winfrey wants to help people get there by examining the role of childhood trauma.

"This story is so important to me and I believe to our culture that if I could dance on the tabletops right now to get people to pay attention to it, I would," she said on "CBS This Morning."

Trauma is the emotional response to a distressing event, including but not limited to violence, sexual assault or abuse, a natural disaster, or an accident.

The heightened emotional response can occur immediately after the event, (think the shock or denial that may occur after getting mugged), but it can also continue months or years later. Survivors may have uncomfortable flashbacks, confusion, anxiety, or feel withdrawn. The symptoms can also be physical, with nightmares, racing heartbeats, muscle tension, and fatigue. Trauma can literally take over your body and mind, and its effects can be magnified in children.

Photo by Duane Prokop/Getty Images for Feeding America.

In a report for "60 Minutes" Oprah sat down with Dr. Bruce Perry, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist and expert on childhood trauma.

Perry revealed that adverse or distressing events in a child's early development, can increase their chances of social, mental, and physical problems later in life.

"That very same sensitivity that makes you able to learn language just like that, as a little infant, makes you highly vulnerable to chaos, threat, inconsistency, unpredictability, violence," Perry told Winfrey. "And so children are much more sensitive to developmental trauma than adults."

Bruce D. Perry, M.D. PhD. Photo by Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images.

Since trauma can stem not just from single events, but from living in stressful environments, children in these situations may be wired differently than those living in consistent, nurturing, predictable homes.

Perry says children living in chaos and unpredictability (think residing in areas with a lot of crime, growing up food insecure, or with parents who are struggling with addiction) are at much higher rates of risk for academic trouble and potential mental health problems.  

"If you have developmental trauma, the truth is you're going to be at risk for almost any kind of physical health, mental health, social health problem that you can think of," Perry said.

"If you don't fix the hole in the soul ... you're working at the wrong thing."

Trauma-informed care is one approach to tackling this issue.

Trauma-informed care means taking into account a person's trauma and the coping mechanisms they've been using when educating or treating someone. This might look like a school environment where open communication, empathy, and sensitivity to how other people are feeling are top priorities, not just to help children cope with trauma, but to create a culture of welcoming, tolerance, and acceptance to prevent further trauma. This would also mean teachers, administrators, and support staff would be trained in direct intervention methods to support traumatized students.

After learning about the effects of developmental trauma, Winfrey reached out to the board of her school in South Africa to change the way they're approaching education.

"It has definitively changed the way I see people in the world, and it has definitively changed the way I will now be operating my school in South Africa and going forward any philanthropic efforts that I'm engaged in," she said on "CBS This Morning."

Oprah Winfrey chats with students of the first graduating class at her South African girls' academy. Photo by Stephane De Sakutin/AFP/Getty Images.

If Winfrey seems especially passionate about this, it's because she experienced traumatic events as a child.

She's spoken at length about the sexual abuse she experienced at the hands of a relative when she was a child. And recently opened up about the spankings she received from her mother, which were common at the time, but no less distressing. Winfrey threw herself into school work and found a positive outlet, and supportive, trusted adults in her teachers. Without those role models and a positive outlet, her story may have gone a lot differently.

Photo by Christopher Polk/Getty Images.

To improve our schools and communities, it's worth rethinking the notion of "bad kids," or "bad parents."

Instead of asking "What is wrong with them?" take a step back and consider the role childhood trauma may have played in their upbringing. Asking, "What have they seen or experienced?," and "Who was there to help them through that experience?" may provide some insight. Trauma doesn't negate their misbehavior, but it may provide the empathy and understanding they desperately need to change their ways.

"If you don't fix the hole in the soul, the thing that is where the wounds started, you're working at the wrong thing."

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