Book Excerpt: ‘Motorhome Prophecies’ By Columnist And Broadcaster Carrie Sheffield
My purpose in writing “Motorhome Prophecies” is to help bring others out of isolation. To let them know that "death and life are in the power of the tongue" (Proverbs 18:21). My father prophesied my death if I left his cult. I internalized those curses, and as a result, suffered many close scrapes with the demons of mental illness. But to quote author Linda Schubert, "While my failures were 'legendary,' the love of God was even more legendary." I'm proud to say I've come through on the other side, and I'm thriving. I pray this book might help others thrive, too.
The following is an excerpt from Carrie Sheffield’s new book, “Motorhome Prophecies: A Journey of Healing and Forgiveness.”
This is a book about sabotage. Sabotage from my father, others, and sabotage from myself — the kind that almost killed me. It’s about how putting up fake fronts of perfectionism is fatally toxic. This book is also about identifying and defeating sabotage, the kind that’s destroying families and society. For many years, I expertly put up fake fronts, and most people were surprised to find out about my abusive, dysfunctional childhood. But all those fake fronts built enormous pressure that eventually burst and landed me in the hospital nine times from complications due to anxiety, depression, PTSD, fibromyalgia, and nearly two decades of episodic suicidal ideation. This book is about tearing down false fronts, healing from the inside out, coming to peace with God, and forgiving others.
I am not the hero of this book, but I am also not the villain; though, for many years I painted myself in these absolutist, black-and-white terms. God is the hero, and though I thought my father was the villain, I now see that he got crushed by severe religious zealotry, sparked by mental illness after suffering sexual assault as a toddler and enduring isolation and the death of his best childhood friend. He’s just as deserving of God’s mercy and compassion as I am. I love my father and am sorry I waited so long to forgive him. He gave me a deep love of our exceptional country, intellectual inquiry, and beautiful music. Though we’ve had many disagreements, I know his heart holds a deep desire to serve others through his work. I pray God’s blessing on his life, especially during his struggles with Alzheimer’s. I’m grateful to my mother for her decades of selfless prayers for me, even when I didn’t appreciate them. I know God was listening.
This book is also about redemption, forgiveness, and separating the gold from the rubbish our families throw on us. I received loads of rubbish, though in the process of taking out the trash, I also threw out important treasures. If I’d taken the time to quietly heal from my trauma, I could have avoided many costly mistakes, failed relationships, and wasted years. Instead, I gave my trauma power over my life, blaming others for my own wrong choices.
I grew up one of eight children with a violent, mentally ill street-musician father, who believed he was a prophet that would someday become president of the United States and that Satan had “reassigned” lesser demons in order to personally torment our family. We lived a transient lifestyle, skirting authorities by constantly moving. Besides various houses, we lived in motorhomes, tents, mobile homes, and sheds. One of my five brothers was born in a tent when our family lived in the public campground woods of Greenbelt Park, Maryland.
When I was a bit older, my dad accepted some inheritance money from his dad, and so we didn’t starve like we previously had (child custody authorities loomed), but we still lived a dysfunctional gypsy lifestyle in our motorhome at truck stops and in Walmart parking lots while performing classical music on the streets and passing out religious pamphlets. I attended seventeen public schools and was partially homeschooled, all before college — yet somehow, I graduated with honors, landed a full-tuition scholarship to Harvard for a master’s degree, and worked on Wall Street before returning to my first love, journalism.
With four older brothers, as the oldest girl I was the fifth child, but first to escape the motorhome. Leaning on a dear high school friend, I left home at age eighteen, despite my dad’s “prophecies” of my rape and death. I was declared legally estranged from my parents, who would not allow me to visit home because they claimed I was satanic and would corrupt my siblings by urging them to leave. Dad said my blood changed when I left home, that I was no longer part of their family, and I was photoshopped out of family pictures. I wrongfully thought that bad things happening — my bike and purse getting stolen, breaking my glasses, getting bitten by a possibly rabid dog, losing my job in a round of layoffs, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 — were all punishment from God for my evilness.
I believe my father’s psychological abuse contributed to the schizophrenia of two of my brothers, including one who sexually assaulted me and attempted to rape me when I was seventeen. Later, my other schizophrenic brother accused me of attempting to seduce him to have sex. He claimed that, with his iron willpower, he fended off my incestuous temptations. Dad believed his lie and said I encouraged this by dressing like a slut.
I’ve seen firsthand how easily a child can fall through the social net meant to protect her from abuse. I’ve also seen how that same net can later buoy up a wounded survivor and set her on the path of success. Fortunately, most of my siblings later left our dysfunctional confines and pursued a range of fulfilling endeavors. We’ve suffered mental illnesses ranging from PTSD and depression to various personality disorders. Sometimes I wounded them, and sometimes they wounded me. Sometimes they’ve been a lifeline to me, and sometimes I’ve acted as a sounding board and offered a lending hand (at times a shaky one) to help them along the path of healing.
I hope my story can help liberate people who feel trapped, whether in abusive family situations, mental illness, poverty, or religious fundamentalism. Others first trapped me, then I mentally held myself bondage. I’ve met many others who also feel trapped, and I know each of us can live a healthy and productive life without becoming the drunken slut or coked-up drug dealer in a body bag that our families threaten about.
My dangerous inner programming, created by daily indoctrination sessions — that could stretch on for hours at a time about my evilness and failures—contributed to my self-destructive feelings and suicidal ideations later in life. I was set up for failure, and fail I did — big time. But in many ways, I failed my way up the food chain. There are barnyards full of self-help literature (heck, even hardheaded economic literature from the likes of statistician Nas- sim Nicholas Taleb) that tell you failure should be embraced and encouraged, that we should become, as Taleb says, “anti-fragile.” That is, we’re not afraid of hardship, we actually welcome it, because it helps us become strong.
Since “the unexamined life is not worth living,” as Socrates told us, I’ve written out my journey of self-examination in hopes of generating some kernels of insight. I see my life as a case study in how religious abuse (or abuse of any type, whether physical, spiritual, sexual, or mental) can be intensely psychologically damaging, and how escaping its allures can lead to Stockholm syndrome behavior. This could include replacing one false cult (like my father’s home- made one) with another. Humans build cults around religion, sex, power, money—you name it.
I’ve no intent to destroy religion—I see its value and hope for billions of people, especially since my Protestant Christian baptism in 2017, and I attend church each Sunday. I still love many people who practice the LDS faith, and there are many treasured cultural parts of Mormonism I will always carry within my heart. What I have done is trace the roots of my family’s Mormon offshoot extremism and explore its heartbreaking impacts. Intolerance flows among religious people as well as those who remain unaffiliated. This is not from God. One of the hardest lessons I’ve learned is that God is not religion, and my hope is this book makes the case for reconciling and striving for peace across denominations and nonbelievers.
After spending nearly twelve years as an agnostic, it took me much time and effort to believe in a God who 1) existed, and 2) was not vengeful, hurtful, or indifferent. Even now, as a practicing Christian, I still see numerous examples of the wrenching pain inflicted by religious people in the name of God.
Though it wasn’t the case when I was younger, my faith in God is now unshaken by the heinous actions of “religious” people. I know that’s not God-that’s corrupted man. This book is for Christian believers and nonbelievers alike. It’s for those who are abused and need help breaking free and recovering from trauma. It is for devout Christians to help us show greater empathy and instill higher emotional awareness for the suffering of others, especially those wounded by human-run religion.
We live in an age of soaring rates of mental illness and domestic abuse, combined with plummeting spirituality, communal trust, and individual sense of purpose. This poisonous cocktail is brewing to create new generations teetering on the brink of suicide and depression, plagued by social media-induced insecurities and a culture that sows division and self-doubt. Humans have always lived in a broken world, but each generation has its own unique toxic manifestations, and my life contained many of them here in the late twentieth and early part of the twenty-first centuries.
My purpose in writing Motorhome Prophecies is to help bring others out of isolation. To let them know that “death and life are in the power of the tongue” (Proverbs 18:21). My father prophesied my rape and death if I left his cult. I internalized those curses, and as a result, suffered many close scrapes with the demon of suicide. But to quote author Linda Schubert, “While my failures were ‘legendary,’ the love of God was even more legendary.” I’m proud to say I’ve come through on the other side, and I’m thriving. I pray this book might help others thrive, too.
“Motorhome Prophecies: A Journey of Healing and Forgiveness” is available now online and in bookstores near you.
Carrie Sheffield is a columnist & broadcaster in Washington, D.C. She is author of the bestselling book Motorhome Prophecies: A Journey of Healing and Forgiveness published by Hachette Book Group.