Amy Griffin Opens Up About the Childhood Trauma She Didn't Remember Until Her 40s

We all know Amy Griffin for her lucrative investments and business success — she’s the founder and managing partner at G9 Ventures, invested in Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop, and played a role in Blackstone’s acquisition of Reese Witherspoon’s brand, Hello Sunshine.

While Amy is widely recognized for her business acumen and celebrity connections, there’s a deeply personal side of her story that remained unknown — until she revealed it in her book, The Tell. Rather than centering on her professional achievements, the book delves into the traumatic experience she endured and suppressed for years.

So, what exactly happened to Amy?

At 12 years old, while living in West Texas, Amy Griffin was sexually abused by her middle school teacher. She details the heartbreaking — yet all too common — incident in her book The Tell and delves even deeper into it during a March 2025 sit-down interview with Oprah. While Amy is now speaking out about the traumatic experience, she had no memory of it for decades. It was a secret she had been keeping without even knowing it was there.

During her conversation with Oprah, she explained, "I had been, for many years, abused in a school bathroom by a teacher." Amy says the abuse began in middle school and continued into her high school years, but she didn’t remember it until much later in life — specifically in her 40s. It was her children who ultimately pushed her to look inward and uncover the truth.

In her book, Amy explains that she was always running — both physically and professionally. She was an avid runner, constantly pushing herself, which led to multiple injuries and her body breaking down. But when her therapist finally asked why she kept pushing through despite her injuries, she had to ask herself, "Why am I not listening to the physical cues that my body is trying to tell me something?"

Then, in her 40s, something shifted. "It was like my body knew something that I didn’t..." she recalled. One night, after being called into her daughter's room, Gigi said, "Mom, you’re there, but you’re not really there. Where are you?" That moment struck a nerve, prompting Amy to figure out why her daughter saw her that way.

At some point, she decided to seek therapy and use a psychedelic — MDMA — to help her access repressed memories. Though she didn’t fully understand what was happening, she told the practitioner she needed to explore her childhood and sexual trauma, even if she wasn’t sure of the full extent. With the support of her loving husband and a safe therapist, she finally allowed herself to open up.

Within five minutes of taking the pill, she asked the therapist, "Why is he here? Why is my teacher here?" She then spent the next eight hours reliving every single instance of the sexual abuse she had endured in middle school. "I told her every single scenario, every single instance of the abuse, one after the other. It was linear... I was reliving the experiences as I had them," she said. But she also noted that she had "so much compassion for myself."

While her book reveals much of what happened, Oprah pointed out that there was also a great deal of violence involved, including her abuser putting her head in the toilet and pressing his foot against her back.

Amy's teacher was not held liable and never faced jail time, as the window to take legal action had closed, Harper's Bazaar pointed out. However, Amy initially tried to hold her abuser accountable. She explained to Oprah that she pursued justice not only because "I knew I had to hold this person accountable so that he couldn't hurt anyone else," but also because she believed "the criminal investigation and this pursuit of that would make me whole. It would take everything away from me."

Despite struggling to find someone who could corroborate her experience or had endured something similar, sharing her story has helped her find a sense of closure.