He still remembered the night his mother walked out the door. Suddenly abandoned into the treacherous foster care system, no one could prepare him for his next “home.”
His grandmother, who owned the brothel where his mother had been a sex worker, gave Richard Pryor to a woman who turned out to be cruel, abusing him horribly.
Pryor turned to comedy in school as a way to ease his pain.
As his star rose in Hollywood, Pryor was in demand – but he was also lying to himself about how much his mother’s abandonment hurt him. He fell into years of drug abuse, eventually setting himself on fire during an overdose!
After that, Pryor turned his life around when he was honest about how much he was traumatized as a foster kid and by his mother’s absence in interviews, skits, and his autobiographical film, “Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling.”
He even turned the fire incident into a powerful stand-up routine.
Like many of us, Pryor had to confront the demons of his past in order to heal.
If we are honest with ourselves and confront our childhood traumas, then we too learn to love ourselves and live whole, rich, balanced lives. How are you confronting and healing from the past?