Commentator and author Carrie Sheffield says she was once trapped in a cult and facing abuse -- that is, until she found healing. Sheffield joins the show to discuss her memoir, "Motorhome Prophecies: A Journey of Healing and Forgiveness."
Newsmakers
'Motorhome Prophecies': Once Trapped in a Cult, Rampant Abuse, Carrie Sheffield Reveals How 'God Heals'
To the newsmakers podcast, I'm Billie Hollowell, and this is a show where we go behind the headlines every day to bring you an interview with a pastor, entertainer, politician, or other notable news figure. And this is a show, again, it's daily, but it's based on our weekly TV show, which is also called Newsmakers. You can watch it on the CBN News channel and also on our YouTube page. And on this show, every day, we dive deep. It's a little more longer form with one of the people who you will often see on our Newsmakers show or across the CBN News platforms. Author and commentator, Kerry Sheffield, says she was once trapped in a cult and enduring abuse. That is until she found healing. She joins us today to talk about her new memoir, Motorhome Prophecies. Here is Kerry Sheffield. Kerry, as always, it's wonderful seeing you, and usually you and I, we connect over politics or news. And this is very different because you have a memoir out. It's called Motorhome Prophecies, and it's your story. And it's a gritty story with a lot of really powerful lessons in it. Why did you choose to write a memoir? What made you want to do this? Yeah, Billie, thanks for having me. I wrote the memoir because I just felt like we're at this time right now in America with record depression and suicide rates. So we have the highest suicide rate since 1941. And we have the highest depression rate ever. And just in terms of the body count, the number of suicides, that's the highest number it's ever been. We had almost 50,000 people commit suicide in 2022, the most recent year the day that we have. And that's almost 17 times the number of people who died in 9/11. So that's happening every year. And unfortunately, for me, I was born into a family where I've been struggling with these issues for decades now. And to me, it seemed like God wanted me to be able to share the tools that I've been able to develop and the message that God is, and all the scientific evidence is there that God and Church and religious practice and faith are very good for your mental health and are strongly associated with lower suicide, lower depression, and basically that God heals. And so I feel that this book and writing it, that's my hope just because we did struggle so much. And even to this day, it's a lifelong journey. Yeah. And hearing you talk about that, that trauma and what you went through, and you talk obviously a lot about this in the book, how difficult, you know, you felt God is sort of calling you to do that. How difficult was it for you to really open up those chapters though, and to dive into it? Because it's one thing to open them up for your own healing. It's another thing to open them up for everybody else's healing and for everybody else to read and hear and see. So what was that process like for you? Yeah. So I called the book my anti-resume book, you know, so in your resume, that's all about the things you're proud of and that you want to promote and it's the polish and the shine and the things that you're excited about and you want the world to know. That's the front that we put up. And the more that I focused on the resume side of things, the more I realized how I had so much unresolved hidden things, that anti-resume, all the things I was ashamed of. And because I was in so much denial about that and focused so much on chasing that resume, the anti-resume eventually, the shadow resume, if you will, kept growing. And I eventually landed in the hospital seven times in 2019 from fibromyalgia and then allergic reactions to drugs. That gave me trying to treat the fibromyalgia, so it was just a lot of compounding issues because I hadn't dealt with the anti-CV stuff. So for me, I saw how important it was to deal with these things. And I think that in this modern age with social media and this sense that everything's fine and we have to put up the fake fronts, that I wanted to pop that bubble. And I realized in writing the book that even though yes, it's personal information, it's actually quite universal and the Bible tells us there's nothing new under the sun. So it's really not that personal of a book in the sense that every single trauma that I dealt with in our family was struggling with, potentially millions of people have also struggled with. I just happen to have a bigger bundle than your average American. But once you slice up that bundle, people who have read the book and are familiar with the story, they see themselves in it. And so for that reason, I felt like this is really a universal book. It's not really a personal book. Yeah. And I love that you said that because everybody has a story, right? And there are different levels of trauma and issues that people have experienced. But take us through a day in the life of your childhood. I know that's a complicated question, but take us through what it was like maybe on any given day, the context, the just your home life, your father, give us some insight. Yeah. So our life was constantly careening in and out of stability to instability. As I say, sometimes we were in a third world existence and then sometimes we were in a first world existence. So it's hard to pinpoint any average day because we did have houses. We were living in normal houses like normal people, but then we would be back on the road in the motorhome. So I have seven biological siblings. So with my mom and dad, 10 people living in the motorhome, spending large chunks of time living in the motorhome with 10 people, which is not fun, especially when it came to go into the bathroom and the sewage management stuff. And we also lived in sheds and tents. And my mother gave birth to my brother when the family didn't even have a motorhome. We just had the tent. He was the brother just ahead of me. And I think that's dangerous, but it was almost like I said, a third world existence. So the instability in terms of constantly every morning, the one thing that was constant was family prayer. So we would wake up and we would be told by my dad how evil we were, how wonderful he was, how he had a prophetic call to save America and how pretty much our soul existence was to serve him. Wow. And, you know, what's so interesting about you knowing you, you know, as friends and knowing your heart and things you talked about even publicly, you're a Christian today. But the upbringing you had, and you mentioned your father's dynamic there with faith and how he interacted, you know, with all of you, I would imagine a lot of people, they walk out of that kind of upbringing, atheists, right, agnostics, they walk away saying, how could anything be true with a God when this is how God was used, you know, in my childhood. I know that's a loaded question and what I'm about to ask you, but how did you navigate that piece to arrive at a place today where you actually have a very healthy relationship with God as a Christian? Yeah. Well, I did spend 12 years roughly as an agnostic. So I did have that reaction and the, I call that what my walk in darkness and unfortunately, I allowed the religious trauma to make me better and angry at the idea of God because, yes, the name of God was used to abuse me and my siblings and my mom, although she was very much an enabler and believed that my dad is a Mormon prophet. I mean, he's going to be 86 in a couple weeks and he has very bad Alzheimer's, so he's not really active anymore, but she basically enabled all of it and she had bought into it. So my dad was excommunicated from the official Mormon church, eventually, unfortunately, because we were moving around so much, there was no Mormon official who really took a proactive interest to preventing the child abuse and the fact that when I told my dad, I wanted to go away to college and I'm within the birth order, but I was the first to leave. So that's, it made it easier to persecute the first person to leave. And so he raised his right hand of the square and he said, I prophesied the name of Jesus, you'll be raped and murdered if you leave. And when I did leave, he said my blood changed. I was no longer a starter. And at that point, previously, a few months before my older of my two schizophrenic brothers had tried to rape me and it groped me. So I just didn't feel physically safe. So I knew that I had to get out, but the notion that there was, there was a God, which I was still on the fence about, I call an agnostic offense sitter. You're not prepared to say there is no God like atheist or you're not prepared to say there is a God like atheist. So that there is a God that the God loves me, that he's not indifferent to me, that he didn't just create earth and walk away, or that he proactively hates me and wants me to fail. I remember struggling with that verse in Jeremiah, and even to this day sometimes where he says, you know, I, I Lord know the plans that I have to prosper you to give you hope in a future. I just felt like that verse was mocking me. And, and the thing is, I like to say with trauma, you end up compounding and traumatic responses yield more traumatic reactions. And so having the childhood trauma for my dad, compounded by other traumatic choices I made for myself, and to look back at the wreckage of my own choices and know that I, I was the one who caused that, but I was blaming the trauma, that's, that's a lot of heavy stuff. And what I found in the Christian walk is that the, the wreckage is nothing is wasted. And so that really appeals to me and why I wrote the book is that I believe there are a lot of people who have made wreckages of, of things in their lives, but to know that God can use that just like, uh, in Joe's, in Joseph in the book of Genesis, where he says what was intended for evil God can use for good. That appealed to me in terms of my Christian walk, but there's a lot more that I can get into about how and why I became Christian. Yeah, I mean, it is, it is really incredible to me that, you know, you've, you've been on this path and it could have gone a very different way. I've always known you to be incredibly bold in the work you do, you're a really hard worker. You've made a huge name for yourself in media. You know, how did you outrun? And I know, I know people can read a lot about the string, but how did you outrun a lot of that past to become so successful to, you know, when, when you mentioned as you were leaving, being told that you're no longer part of the family, that your blood changed. I mean, those are things that they stick with you. And yet you were able to go to Harvard, you know, become incredibly successful. How did you, how did you just break past that and continue moving forward towards success? Yeah, I, I think the, well, it was both, I think positive and negative motivation. I think the negative piece of it was I was constantly feeling like I had to prove myself. Like I had to prove to my dad he was wrong. And so I was just driven, driven, driven to succeed. I took being rejected and not being allowed home for Christmas or summer breaks during college as my opportunity to get internships. So I had five internships by the time I graduated. And so I definitely tried to, I tried to outshine my dad. I tried to be competitive with my dad in terms of achieving things and going to Harvard because he didn't go to Harvard. I went to better school than he did. Those were unhealthy motivations to be fueled by anger, not healthy. And I think that contributed to my, my fibromyalgia, my collapse of my health years later. The positive motivation I should say, and I think that that's, that's the important part that I wanted to put in the book is like. We're, we're inherently like, you know, Paul says we have the thorn in our flesh. So to be honest about the thorns that we have. But the positive motivations and the positive reasons why I succeeded is that I, I wanted something better for my life. I, I didn't want to be trapped in a motor home. I, I wanted to build something different and something better. And I also wanted to have a positive impact in public policy and seeing and traveling the world and looking at history about how much policy matters and how it shapes the trajectory of a people. Those are all really important. And so I wanted to be part of that journey. And so that motivated me as well. And it made me feel like I was part of something much bigger and that I didn't need to feel bad because of what was happening in my interpersonal life, I could be part of something that was much bigger on the public service front. Yeah, no, and, and that, yeah, that's incredible. That positive and that negative, right, that sort of catapulted you forward, what would you say to somebody right now? And I want people to pick up motor home prophecies and read it and see this story. But what would you say to somebody who maybe they're in the position you were, maybe they're facing abuse, maybe they're facing uncertainty, or maybe they've already been sort of excommunicated from their family, pushed out of their family and they're struggling. And maybe they're in an agnostic place. They're in a place where they feel like God's abandoned them. What kind of advice would you give them in this moment based on your experience? Thank you. Yes. And I've got a copy right here. Folks can see what it looks like. You can hold it in your hands, motor and prophecies. I think the thing that I would say to people who are going through this, depending on the nature of what's happening with the estrangement, for me, it was religious trauma and religious disownment and excommunication. And for others, it might be alcoholism or substance abuse from a parent or mental illness as it was for my dad as well. It's causing this. I think for me, especially on the religious front, one of the big takeaways that I want for people to know is that God is not religion, that even if you were abused in a religious setting, that's actually not God's will. And to learn that that is something to be separated and something that you can develop a relationship with God yourself. And you don't need to go through the filter of a family member or parent. So if that family or parent has rejected you, you can go directly to the source of goodness. You don't need them as your intermediary. And you can find that sense of peace and you could find that sense of healing. And as I said, all the scientific evidence shows that a relationship with God is good for your mental health and good for preventing depression and other issues. So the sense of knowing that you're not alone, I think that's very important. So I would also say get involved in community, get rooted and planted in a strong church. Find fellow travelers who maybe they don't have as much trauma as you do. But that's probably a good thing because then there's somebody you can lean on. And still be afraid to be vulnerable. I think that's the other big thing I would say is that now I've had people say to me, I had no idea this people I've known for years, especially in professional context. Wow, I know I did this, you were, this was happening or that you had this. And I said, oh, well, that was mission accomplished because I was trying to hide it, you know, but in hindsight, I think I would have not suffered so much the hardship and some stumbles along the way if I had been more open and if I had been more willing to share with others and to be vulnerable, and it's hard to be vulnerable. It's our nature to want to the shield up and shut people out. But also knowing who to using and this is a hard thing too when you're traumatized to know the discernment, discerning who to be vulnerable with. So don't just share it with everybody. Like Jesus said, don't cast pearls before swine. So being discerning and deliberate about seeing the kind of life that you want and the people you want in your circle. Those are the people you should be seeking out and being vulnerable with, not, you know, by their frees you shall know them. And I think my, as we call it, your picker who you're picking, I wasn't listening to my own intuition and allow that picker to get the GPS positioning off because I was so reeling in the trauma. So I think being more observant and discerning when you're going through this and not being afraid to be alone. I think that's another hard part for me that I would, I found especially in like dating contacts that I'd rather date someone who was abusive and unkind to me than be alone. And that's not a good, that's not a good MO. So I think finding healthy people and good people, but also not being afraid to be alone in a healthy way. Yeah, and being aware, you know, being self aware, a lot of us are not aware of these things. So when you start to unpack them and understand, oh, this is something that I'm prone to doing, right? Because of these other things that have happened in my life and, you know, going through what you did growing up essentially in, in a cult, right? I mean, you're, that's what you were dealing with and finding healing later on in God and through God. It's a really powerful message, everything you just said about faith that that is there for everyone, right, that anybody who has gone through any sort of trauma like this, I know, again, a lot of people when they go through a religious based trauma, they retract from faith. You went on your own journey of that, but this is an incredible book. People need to pick it up, motorhome prophecies, carry any final words you want to leave people with because I mean, there's so much we could go on for, for two hours here because your story is incredible. But I like to give the Florida people before we head out anything you want to just final parting words for people. Yeah. Thank you, Billy. And yeah, it's, it's interesting, like you said, the subconscious, the programming that has happened with time that you're being directed by your own emotions. And that's not from God. And that's something that I'm still unpacking and learning and struggling with. So I think being able to surrender that to God, to reprogram like, like the Bible says, to the God can basically reorder the pattern of your mind and renew your mind. And so don't give up hope if you're going through these issues with mental illness or any struggles that God can and will reorder the pattern of your mind. These patterns don't form overnight, so they're not going to be recovered overnight. So having patience and grace with yourself is important. And just knowing that surrender also, I think releasing control and the ego and the desire to be right all the time, I know in politics, that's such a natural urge. And having that posture of humility, I think that that will go a long way. And that's something that I wish I knew when I was younger. Well, it's a good lesson for all of us. The book is Motorhome Prophecies. Carrie, appreciate your time today. Thanks, Billy. All for today's Newsmakers podcast, be sure to tune in for the next episode of the show. And also head over to the CBN News YouTube channel and the CBN News channel to watch Newsmakers every week. We'll see you soon. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]