Mara Brock Akil

speaker

353 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 30 Jun

Mara Brock Akil’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.

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The Oprah Podcast · Mara Brock Akil’s New Novel About Betrayal, Shame & Redemption with Oprah · 30 Jun 2026 podcast

And I have used the power of the pen to not only tell stories and entertain, but also to heal myself.

I've put myself in a lot of my characters.

A part of my...

ethos is I tell the truth through fiction.

So there's going to be some level of real truth that I'm drawing from.

And I'm grateful that I have the ability to learn how to craft it in a way that really becomes this micro story of mine becomes a macro of what's impacting a lot of us.

And I can find it through the workshopping of the story about who this book is for, why this book now.

And there's just a lot of shame, I think, because even with the onset of the camera and the social media, we're hiding parts of ourselves.

Absolutely.

We're just hiding so much of ourselves.

And actually, I think it's the thing that frees us the most.

And so the writing the book was an opportunity for me to free myself.

I would share this, that it was a time in my life, it was from nine to 12, that I was molested.

And what was interesting to me at that time, and this is where the book comes into play, is how well I managed.

And I managed by one of the greatest gifts I've ever had was that's where my relationship with God truly began.

That my relationship is rooted in that.

And sometimes I even think about

if that had never happened, where would my relationship with God be?

And so thus and such, well, it happened to me and God loves me.

So I'm supposed to do something with it.

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