An Excerpt from “Motorhome Prophesies: A Journey of Healing and Forgiveness” by Carrie Sheffield
Excerpt from Motorhome Prophesies by Carrie Sheffield
I grew up one of eight children with a violent, mentally ill street-musician father, who believed he was an offshoot fundamentalist Mormon prophet that would someday become president of the United States and that Satan had “reassigned” lesser demons to personally torment our family. Born into the official LDS Church, commonly known as Mormon, my dad was eventually excommunicated. 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, 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, and 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.
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.
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 homemade 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.
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About the Author
CARRIE SHEFFIELD is a columnist and broadcaster in Washington, D.C. and author of the bestselling book Motorhome Prophecies: a Journey of Healing and Forgiveness. A senior policy analyst at Independent Women’s Forum, Carrie earned a master’s in public policy from Harvard University (business policy concentration), a B.A. in communications from Brigham Young University and completed a Fulbright fellowship in Berlin. As an associate at Moody’s Investors Service in Manhattan, Carrie publicly rated a portfolio of more than $5 billion in healthcare bonds. As a credit analyst at Goldman Sachs, she internally rated municipal trading counterparties with potential exposure $2 billion. Carrie researched for American Enterprise Institute scholar Edward Conard and served as Warren Brookes Journalism Fellow at Competitive Enterprise Institute. While serving as executive director for Generation Opportunity, a project of Americans For Prosperity, she spoke at the U.S. Senate alongside key senators in favor of landmark tax reforms passed by Congress in 2017. She was a credentialed White House correspondent for JustTheNews.com, covering economic policy, the 2020 COVID crisis response and presidential elections.
Carrie analyzed 2014 Election Night results live on MSNBC and interviewed House Speaker Paul Ryan on the mainstage of the 2016 Conservative Political Action Conference. She provided analysis for the first Fox News 2016 GOP presidential primary debate, co-moderated a 2016 U.S. House congressional debate in Harlem and debated healthcare policy with Tom Brokaw on MSNBC the night of the 2016 Vice Presidential debate. She analyzed the 2018 White House Correspondents’ Dinner as a CNN on-air guest and encouraged 2018 midterm voter turnout for ABC’s “Good Morning America” and sparred as a guest on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” and PBS’ “The McLaughlin Group.”
Carrie covered Congress for The Hill newspaper and was a founding reporter at POLITICO. She contributed on political economy at Forbes, wrote editorials for The Washington Times and advised the digital women’s Website Bustle.com. Carrie published in The Wall Street Journal, TIME, USA Today, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and HuffPost. In foreign affairs, Carrie reported on the 25th anniversary of perestroika in Moscow, economic and national security reforms in Japan, North-South Korean relations in Seoul, and the Beijing Olympics in China. As a correspondent for The Jerusalem Post, she covered the Israeli parliament, Egyptian political reforms in Cairo and geopolitics in Qatar.
As founder of Bold TV, a digital TV network, Carrie’s entrepreneurial work has been recognized in profiles by The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine, Harvard University, CNN, and Columbia Journalism Review. Carrie is a member of the Harvard Christian Alumni Society and a winner of the William F. Buckley Awards by America’s Future Foundation, listed as a Maverick PAC’s “Future 40” influential young conservatives. An avid runner who completed the Marine Corps Marathon, she is a three-time winner of the National Press Club 5K race among female members of The National Press Club. She loves traveling, and prior to turning age 30 visited every continent—including Antarctica.
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