For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. – Jeremiah 29:11

The road to spiritual freedom. I interviewed with Carrie Sheffield way back on September 25th and, partially due to some unforeseen events, ended up holding it longer than is typical for me. Somehow though, it seems perfectly timed for this season of renewal and new beginnings. I hope it inspires you to persevere through whatever your current circumstances or psychological baggage – and to believe in God‘s power and desire to transform you life for the better. Prayer works.

A sought-after journalist and economic expert, Carrie Sheffield has appeared on a wide cross-section of TV networks, including CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, CBS News, CNBC, the BBC, ABC, PBS and C-SPAN, as well as HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher. She had drawn praise for her willingness to take on the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and testified as an economic expert before the US Congress. Her memoir Motorhome Prophecies: A Journey of Healing and Forgiveness has been compared to Hillbilly Elegy, Vice President-elect J.D. Vance‘s bestselling remembrance of his early years growing up in a dysfunctional but, ultimately, triumphant Appalachian family that was adapted into a hit Netflix movie.

Sheffield’s own story involves growing up the fifth of eight children with a violent, mentally-ill father who believed himself to be a Mormon prophet destined to become President of United States. Her family lived a drifter experience, often camping out in Walmart parking lots. During her childhood, she attended 17 public schools (when she wasn’t being homeschooled) and would perform classical music on the streets while passing out cultish religious pamphlets and eluding child welfare agents.

JWK: So, tell me about your childhood and what that was like.

Carrie Sheffield: Sure. The name of my book is Motorhome Prophecies because, with my seven biological siblings and our mother, our father made us live large portions of our childhood in a motorhome. We also lived in sheds, tents and cars. We also had houses. The only constant was chaos. By the end, I attended 17 public schools and home school.

My father said said that as an adult he became suicidal because he had suffered sexual assault from a babysitter. His trauma, he kept reproducing that as an adult. He basically passed trauma down to us to the point where my siblings and I have suffered a lot of trauma, a lot of depression, a lot of suicidal ideation.

JWK: He believed he was some sort of prophet, right?

CS: Yes. He believed that he was a Mormon prophet, basically his own offshoot cult, that he would become president some day and that it was our job to be his servants to help him fulfill that prophetic call.

I’m careful when I have interviews, and in the book, I do my best to explain what he did was not sanctioned by the official Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He was eventually excommunicated but that was well after I was an adult. Basically his abuse had the tinges of religious trauma. He just (believed) that his calling was to convert people by playing beautiful classical music. Eventually all eight of us – and my mom, all ten people – (formed) a small orchestra and passed out religious brochures to convert people.

JWK: Did you know at the time that this wasn’t normal?

CS: I thought we were special. I thought we had the calling. I knew it wasn’t “normal” but I didn’t think it was sad, necessarily. Because it’s your parents, you believe them. You have them as your heroes. When child custody services came and tried to take us away and interviewed us, we were so brainwashed and conditioned by our dad to defend him that they weren’t able to take us in. This happened in Massachusetts. Then we fled and went to Utah.

Actually (last) September 13th I organized an event with Attorney General of Utah Sean Reyes. We had a woman who was also one of the lead child custody or child abuse forensic interviewers. She said that that is quite common – that a parent will coerce or coach their children to defend them and to their best to try to hide the abuse.

JWK: Was your mother all in on this? Was she in agreement with your father or was she kind of coerced herself?

CS: I would say both. I would say she was totally in on it in the sense that she totally believed that my father was a prophet but I also personally believe that she was brainwashed and abused to be turned against her own family and to be turned against anybody who might be able to offer her a different viewpoint.

JWK: How old were you when your father was excommunicated by the LDS Church?

CS: It was in 2013. So, I would have been 30.

JWK: So you were an adult already.

CS: Yeah.

JWK: And by that time you had already escaped from the situation. You were the first of your siblings to separate yourself and escape your father’s toxic teachings. Can you tell me about that?

CS: Yeah.  It was a difficult process. I say in the book part of the impetus – or the trigger – was that my oldest brother by that point had severe schizophrenia. He tried to rape me. I just didn’t feel safe by that point. I didn’t feel safe living in a motorhome or in very close quarters with someone who was almost twice my weight, had sexual fantasies about me and was severely mentally ill. At the same time, I was torn with loyalty for my family. So, I decided to undertake what I now call my first investigative journalism project – Is my father a prophet?

As I detail in the book, I had helped him with his autobiography that he was working on. In that process I sort of threw his documents in some boxes and found letters to and from his mother that I found upsetting. Then I found some of his handwritten prophecies that he had written down in the same format as Joseph Smith had written the Doctrine of the Covenants which is one of the which is (part of) the LDS scriptural canon.

My hand started shaking when I found these handwritten prophecies because to me it appeared that he was in direct contradiction with the official Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints of which we were all baptized. The structure of the LDS Church is that it’s similar to the Pope in that there’s only one prophet at a time. It’s very centralized. He lived in Salt Lake City. His name was not Ralph Sheffield. So, I knew that my father was basically a rogue. It was interesting because I had never really called him a prophet per se. Growing up it was just more that he had a special calling. When I found those handwritten letters that really crystalized for me “Wow! My father is a false prophet.”

JWK: What happened then? How old were you when you left home?

CS: It was a couple months after my 18th birthday. I had told my father that I wanted to leave. He raised his hand like he was making an oath to the sky. He said “I prophesy in the name of Jesus you’ll be raped and murdered if you leave.” It was very upsetting because I just wanted to go away to college. I have four older brothers. I’m the first girl. I feel like, in some respects, it was a lot easier to marginalize and isolate me because I was the first and to have my older brothers, to some degree, bully me. When I did leave my father said my blood changed and I was no longer his daughter. He had my brother photoshop me out of (family pictures).

JWK: So, you’re father was kind of threatening you if you left but you were also worried about your schizophrenic brother if you stayed, right?

CS: Exactly. I say in the book that my brother’s assault of me was the catalyst for me ultimately leaving. I say in the book that “Sometimes life’s most wrenching crucibles lead to our greatest moments of freedom.” So, as terrible as it is to have that type of assault occur, it was really that push that I needed to get me out of that traumatic environment – but, as is the case with many people, including my father, even if you leave a traumatic environment…the trauma is quite often reproduced in your head.

JWK: I can understand that. So, you managed to get into college.

CS: Yes. Would you like me to mention my Beliefnet tie here?

JWK: Sure.

CS: Because it was right around this age. When I was in high school my family got dial-up internet. That was my first exposure to the outside world – having an email address where I could communicate. I didn’t do anything that I perceived as morally questionable or anything like that but I did sign up for Beliefnet. I was an active poster on there. My most vivid memory of it was when we were living in a very rural area of Branson, Missouri that I talk about in the book. It was during repeated conversations that I had with people on Beliefnet – where I was anonymous, they were anonymous – that I really started to grapple with my faith. It was the first time I had ever really spoken at any length with someone who was not Mormon. I actually remember describing one of the miracles my dad said that he witnessed – or that he had from the Holy Ghost. I remember somebody on the message board asking me critical questions about his claims. That was the first time I felt really scared or anxious that somebody was questioning my dad – but, at the same time, I thought they were interesting questions. So, I do credit Beliefnet, to some degree, with helping me develop my critical thinking skills so that I could ask questions and ultimately get my freedom.

JWK: That’s good. So, how did you get into college?

CS: I had graduated. I ended up getting I think it was like a 4.6 GPA just from a bunch of – I don’t know how they call it today – like weighted courses, like advanced placement courses kind of thing. So, I had a really strong GPA. Then I had strong test scores. So, that profile gave me a scholarship…for a state college in Missouri since I had graduated from a Missouri high school. This is after going to17 public schools and home school. Basically, I used the scholarship money which went directly to the school to create that pathway out.

I initially wanted to go to Brigham Young University. That was my dream school but I was scared because it required a bishop endorsement and I did not want my local bishop to ask any questions of my dad or say anything to my dad. I also had no money to pay the application fee. It didn’t even occur to me that BYU might waive the application fee. I was just so scared about everything.

Fortunately, Truman State University did not have an application fee. So, I was grateful to Truman State for welcoming me. Between scholarship money, working at Taco Bell, working at the student newspaper and then working at the local newspaper in Kirksville, Missouri – the Kirksville Daily Express – I was able to pay my tuition at Truman State and have a modest living. I was able to build out a little life there. Then I transferred to Brigham Young University for my sophomore, junior and senior years. That’s how it started.

JWK: That’s quite an accomplishment, managing to do that. You also write about have a near-death experience that helped snap you out of the sort of inner voices from your past that you were struggling with.

CS: Yes. The near-death experience happened later in my life. Even though, like I said, I had left the motorhome and the abusive home environment I had recreated it in my own head. This is quite often the case with people who have PTSD or what’s also known as CPTSD which is multiple traumas. I was also diagnosed with depression and anxiety.

Years later, after graduating with an undergrad and my masters and working in finance, I decided to create start-up. It was a media company that I ran in New York City for four years. By the end, I was not running the company. The company was running me.

JWK: What was the name of the company?

CS: It was called Bold TV. The chapter in the book where I talk about Bold TV is called Shattered Glass. I talk about the experience where I basically worked myself to near death. I realize now in hindsight the reason I had created the company is because I had a lack of inner self-worth. I didn’t have a sense that I was actually worthy of love and respect just for who I was as opposed to how much money I was making or how many awards I was getting or things like that.

JWK: Because you were finding a lot of success in the media at this point.

CS: I was, yes, but I chose not to prioritize my own health so I ended up in the hospital. It happened in 2019. I was in the hospital seven different times over the course of that, basically, spring and summer period. I almost died from an allergic reaction to a drug in one of the hospital experiences. I had hyponatremia. It’s where your sodium levels drop very low. If your sodium levels drop too low then your brain swells and you can die. So, I had a severe panic attack. My friend called an ambulance. They checked all my levels. They found that I was severely lacking in sodium to the point where my brain was on the verge of swelling. They were able to pump me full of saline and get my sodium levels back up – but it was a (time of) lot of anxiety and a lot suicidal ideation around the business taking over my life, my exhaustion and, basically, lack of self-worth and lack of really taking the time to process childhood trauma.

JWK: And this incident was a catalyst for really helping you break free?

CS: I think so. This is Beliefnet and I would describe this memoir as a spiritual memoir. I swung the pendulum from being an extremist Mormon cult member to being more mainstream LDS – but I then I eventually I became agnostic and very angry at organized religion. I was agnostic for almost twelve years. Eventually I was baptized as a Protestant Christian on December 3rd, 2017. My hospitalizations happened – even after my baptism – I think, in part, because I still had not really understood the difference, which I describe in the book, between false idols and God or worshiping the gifts from God versus worshiping God Himself. I was worshiping the gifts – which are the gifts of media, connection and the ability to have an entrepreneurial idea. I was letting those take over my life. I was doing that even while I was a Christian. I think it’s very human to do that. So, I had to wrestle with that – to say “Hey, what do I really value? What do I really worship in my life?” That’s something that I talk in the book about.

The late Pastor Tim Keller wrote an amazing book. The title is Counterfeit Gods. Each chapter is basically a false god that humans worship. He (pointed out that) it’s kind of easy to make fun of the Children of Israel for worshiping a golden calf and saying “Oh, ha ha, those silly primitive people. They’re worshiping statues that are made of gold. That’s silly!”

JWK: We do the same thing now with the Emmys and the Oscars and all that stuff.

CS: Exactly! We do exactly the same thing now! Our idols just look a little bit different. Yes, maybe the statues are a little smaller – like an Emmy or a Grammy idol – but it’s other things too. It’s things that are gifts – which is why we worship them, because they’re good often.

JWK: Well, they’re gifts from God so you want to utilize your gifts but you don’t worship the gifts themselves or be controlled by them, right?

CS: Exactly.  Like I said, I was running the company but then eventually the company was running me because I had surrendered my worship to the company instead of God. How that was in practice was instead of waking up every morning and asking God “How can I serve You? How can I be Your hands and feet today?” I would basically wake up and try to use God as my bellhop or my vending machine and say “God this is what You need to do for me” and “You’d better do or You hate me” and “This is it or nothing.” That’s a posture of pride and it’s a posture of idolatry. Those were things that I had not realized in my mindset.

JWK: Who helped you along the way? Did you ever meet Tim Keller?

CS: I never got to meet him because right around the time that I started to attend his church in New York was when he retired because of his cancer. I never did get to meet him however I did get to meet his son and did attend service with his son. I had another mentor who is very dear to me. He’s the presiding bishop. He’s about to be released but he’s been (there) for years. That’s Michael Curry…I talk about a book that he wrote called Crazy Christians that I got my hands on (which) I just found to be really moving and beautiful.

I also had another mentor shortly after my baptism. It’s a pastor down in Charleston, North Carolina. I call him my “forgiveness mentor.” His name is Rev. Anthony Thompson. Anthony Thompson’s wife Myra was murdered in 2015 in the church shooting at Emanuel Church where where a white supremacist drove across the state from Columbia, South Carolina to Charleston specifically to hunt and kill black people. He killed nine people in the church that day, including Anthony’s wife. It was just a marvelous story forgiveness though because in the bond hearing with this heinous murderer Anthony and multiple family members of the victims forgave him. It was this powerful moment around the world – that these family members chose forgiveness and reconciliation over bitterness, anger, hatred and violence.

JWK: Amazing. You also gained some praise for taking on the Muslim Brotherhood which, I guess, struck a personal chord with you because it was also kind of cultish religious situation.

CS: Yeah…It was during my graduate studies at Harvard. That summer we went through a program that I was in led by a longtime CBS journalist in Cairo. He led us to the Muslim Brotherhood headquarters. This was before the Arab Spring. I have not been there since. This was in 2009. To be in the Muslim Brotherhood headquarters and see some of the propaganda…I do remember there was a cover with the Statue of Liberty with blood all over it. We had an interview with one of the spokesmen for Muslim Brotherhood where I asked some critical questions about what was happening. That was a powerful moment to me because I believe in the power now – as someone who is involved in religious practice and is involved interfaith dialogue, including with the Muslim community…in the Washington D.C. area. They were the first group that I had ever gave a key public speech to. They were very welcoming. I have many friends also with the Ismaili Muslim community and then other friends (including those) I helped escape from Afghanistan during the botched withdrawal in 2021. I was able to help several interpreters, family and other people targeted by the Taliban chief escape.

JWK: Wow! How were you able to help them?

CS: It was through a combination of just pushing forward their applications, their paperwork and their visas with any and every contact It happened because my brother is a captain in the US Army and his supervisor had been in Afghanistan. That was kind of the pipeline. It was his former interpreter and then it was the network of people within that network. So, I’m based here in D.C. and I have contacts with the State Department, I have contacts in DOD and with Intelligence. So, it was really just sending out emails and messaging chats. Then, once we got them here to the US to help them get settled, I joined an email group for refugee resettlement and helped them with different things that I could. I even bought one of them a queen-sized bed. Yeah, just doing different things. I want to help people who are fleeing religious persecution. In this case it was…the Taliban persecuting everyday people who didn’t tow to their ideology.

JWK: There’s a lot of power in faith. It can be used for very good things and very bad things, right?

CS: Exactly. One of the major themes of the book is that God is not religious. Religion, at its best, will point us and connect us to God but, when weaponized and used for human ego, it can become very dangerous because it gives people a sense of superiority and self-righteousness that causes them to dehumanize other people around them.

The bigger picture here though is that part of why I believe my book is resonating is that it covers a lot on the topic of mental illness and mental health. We in America right now have the highest suicide rate since the Great Depression, since 1941. We have the highest depression rate among young people ever seen.

On June12th I organized a conference that was hosted by the Museum of the Bible. They generously provided space for us. The chief curator of the Museum of the Bible – his name is Jeff Kloha – was our host. The name of the conference was The Bible and Mental Health. We brought in experts from Harvard Medical School (and) basically some of the top scholars in mental health and faith to review the overwhelming amount of scientific evidence that religion, religious community, faith practice (and) prayer is strongly associated with positive mental health, low depression, low suicide and low substance abuse. This is found in studies everywhere from Harvard Medical School to the National Review of Economic Research to a literature review in Psychiatric Times. What’s interesting is that, in some cases, there is a negative correlation. I would say in my family’s case that was it – but we are, according to the overwhelming amount of data, the outliers.

That was the paradox for me – to be able to go back to faith and say “I believe in the power of God to heal mental health.” It’s not just belief. It’s actually scientifically documented – but it must be done in a way that is healthy. So, now I have founded a project called Healthy Faith…Like it says in the name it’s Healthy Faith. So, it’s all about educating people about healthy faith – not controlling, abusive faith, not a lack of faith not rejecting or condemning faith – but really finding that middle ground of healthy faith.

JWK: I totally get it. Extreme religion can be a bad thing…On the other hand, I think you find the same sort of thing in the Woke philosophy – just without God.They do the same kind of controlling things. I don’t know if that resonates with you.

CS: Yeah. I’ve experienced that. If you look at the belief, quite often with people who are extreme militant leftists there is a strong correlation with atheism, hostility toward God and agnosticism. I mean I saw that as a recovered agnostic.

JWK: I find it ironic that religious militants and anti-religious militants often employ the same tactics.

CS: Yeah. It basically becomes a religion. There is this rigidity of group think, a rigidity of dogma and a rigidity and, basically, worshiping of human power. Basically Marxism in the Soviet Union and in China is…forced atheism. They boiled nuns alive in tar. They didn’t have freedom of religion. So, this idea that Marxism is somehow freethinking, loving and tolerant doesn’t jibe at all with history.

JWK: So, how is your family today? Are your parents still alive?

CS: They are alive. My father is 86 and has severe Alzheimer’s. So, he’s really not very active at all. In my book, in my chapter on forgiveness – where I have that mentoring from Anthony Thompson, the Charleston pastor that I mentioned – I did choose to forgive him. I was able to sit down, have dinner with him and forgive him.

JWK: As you say, he was a victim himself  – of the abuse that was done to him.

CS: He was. Chapter 16 is titled Forgiving Dad. He had not only child sexual assault (in his past). He also had other childhood traumas. For example, his best friend in middle school died in a (sudden) accident. He also describes in chapters of his own autobiography (how) his parents made him live (in what he described as) an almost dungeon-like environment for I don’t know exactly how long. It was because his sisters were upstairs, his father’s law office was upstairs and the front of the house/apartment was rented to another family. So, basically, they made him live in a broom closet kind of thing. It didn’t have any direct passage to go upstairs. He had to go up outside in the dark, even in the dead of winter, just to use the bathroom or get a drink of water. So, that made him feel very isolated and very alone. He said at the time, according to his writing, that was when he believed that the Holy Ghost was his best friend. In my opinion, that was kind of the seeds (of) “I can’t trust people. I can’t trust my family. Nobody cares about me. Therefore, I need to be grandiose as possible because I’m better than all of them.”

JWK: How’s your mother now?

CS: She’s ten-and-a-half years younger than my dad. So, she’s basically his caretaker. Unfortunately, because he did turn her against her own family, she did not go to her own mother’s funeral or her sister’s funeral because she said they were sinful. I love her. My heart breaks that the fruit of all of this has been devastating for our family. Out of eight children that are living – this is in addition to two others who were born live and died as infants – we now have zero marriages. We have five people who have never married and three who are now divorced. That to me is mathematically an anomaly when it comes to marriage and divorce rates in America – that, out of eight children, we have no marriages.

JWK: May I ask, have you ever been married?

CS: No, I haven’t. I have a chapter in the book about my struggles with that. The book is more about my father wounding but there is mother wounding. Actually, since the book has come out I’ve processed more about that mother wounding. Chapter 12 is called Queen of Lonely Hearts. That describes how I basically repeated my mother wound. In my mom’s case, she’s been with an abusive man almost for fifty years. I just keep repeating and dating a series of one-after-the-other boyfriends who cheat on me, are verbally abusive or are emotionally unavailable and not interested in having a relationship that’s grounded in love, trust and respect. So, I’m still wrestling with that. I’ve done a lot of work since the book has come out.

JWK: I wish you good luck with that. I hope you find somebody.

CS: Thank you…I went through a program (called) the Atlas Project. It has been so powerful for me to unlock how and why I keep reproducing the mother wound. I highly recommend it to anybody who has experienced trauma – or anybody who wants to understand why they keep making choices they don’t want to make.

JWK: So, among your siblings, none of you are currently married – but, overall, are you doing okay?

CS: We’re all alive but I don’t go into heavy detail about my siblings for their own privacy.

JWK: Of course. I understand…What do you hope people take from your book?

CS: It’s my personal story of how I have significantly chosen…to break the cycle of trauma. I have done it very imperfectly. I have, in some cases, done it very slowly. Overall, my message is that faith, religion, religious practice, religious community, faith community is so positive for your mental health. It can rewire brain. There’s a concept called neuroplasticity in science where you rewire your brain. If you get into a healthy faith community there is also…prayer (which has been) transformative for me…So, that’s what I hope people will take away. If not for them, for somebody they love.

It’s not even necessarily for traumas as severe as what I went through. All of us have struggles. All of us deal with depression. That’s baked into the cake of humanity. I heard an interesting quote which is that “If you drown in 20 feet or water or 200 feet of water, it’s the same. You’re drowning.” So, some people when they hear about my story they say…”You’re trauma’s so much worse then mine.” To me, it’s not about comparison. It’s not about who’s had it worse. It’s really about Who is the Source of my healing? How do I move forward? What’s the solution? That’s my very imperfect narrative in my book of how to find the solution.

I’ll end, if I may, with a song I’m working on right now (built on Jesus saying in the Bible) “Who among you if your son asks for bread you would give him a stone? If he asks for a fish you would give him a serpent?” Well, my father gave me lots of stones and lots of serpents. Instead of dropping them, I went out to the stone store and the serpent store and I bought a lot more serpents and a lot more stones – and that’s what self-sabotage is. What Christ and the Christian journey offers is the ability to drop those stones and to drop those serpents and to instead be filled with the Bread of Life – and to be nourished with the fish and all of the abundant things that come in that walk.