A conversation with Kate Price about her new book, This Happened to Me: A Reckoning

Content warning: This article discusses human trafficking and the commercial sexual exploitation of a child.

On September 18, 2025, the Wellesley Centers for Women (WCW) celebrated the release of This Happened to Me: A Reckoning by Associate Research Scientist Kate Price, Ph.D. Price was joined in conversation by pioneering activist, speaker, and writer and WCW Senior Scholar Jean Kilbourne, Ed.D., with introductory remarks by WCW Interim Executive Director Georgia Hall, Ph.D.

Hall spoke about seeing early drafts of parts of the book when Price submitted them to WCW’s internal writing group for feedback. Even at such an early stage, she was wowed—“this writing is so amazing and powerful,” she said.

Price grew up in a small mill town with her sister and parents in northern Appalachia. At the insistence of her mother, and through her academic accomplishments, she escaped the unbroken cycles of poverty, violence, addiction, mental illness, and abuse that had plagued her family for generations. She started a new life in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in pursuit of her master’s and Ph.D. But despite having left this dark world behind, it still kept a firm grip on her.

In her exquisitely rendered, transformative memoir, Price describes how she broke free of that which had defined her childhood and went on to create a purpose-driven life and family, on her own terms—eventually returning to the same Appalachian community to use her education and advocacy to help ensure children are given the attention, protection, and services that she never received.

“I wrote this book for survivors—to give them a road map I did not have,” said Price.

Price and Kilbourne spoke about how their lives and work are connected. “This is the key lesson that Jean has taught me over and over again: You cannot abuse or mistreat a person if you don’t first objectify them,” said Price, referring to Kilbourne’s work on objectification through her renowned film series “Killing Us Softly: Advertising’s Image of Women” and award-winning book Can’t Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel.

Kilbourne agreed, “Violence against women depends on objectification. It’s very easy to abuse a thing, and women are turned into objects in our culture in all kinds of ways.”

Charting Price’s journey 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. 

“Because of your work and the work of others, a lot of this is coming out into the open,” said Kilbourne. “What a huge difference that makes.” She quoted the poet Muriel Rukeyser: “What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.”