This Women’s History Month, women – including conservative ones - are making waves. They’re lending their voices to important conversations. They’re fighting the Department of Labor’s obtuse freelance busting rule or standing up to fringe social media types who bully strong, confident outdoorswomen.
One woman to watch is prolific conservative columnist and newsmaker Carrie Sheffield. From cautioning against electric vehicle mandates following her own EV mishap to championing biological women in sports, Carrie’s writings are impactful and positively shape the news cycle.
The multi-hyphenate graduated from Harvard Graduate School, was a Fulbright Scholar, worked on Wall Street, and served as a Jerusalem Post correspondent. Today, she is perhaps best known for her work with Independent Women’s Forum as a senior policy analyst (an organization we both work for). And that’s just scratching the surface on her many impressive accomplishments and achievements.
Her path to success, however, was very bumpy and tragic. In her new memoir Motorhome Prophecies: A Journey of Healing and Forgiveness, Carrie gets raw about enduring a childhood marked by endless abuse, mental illness, and fundamentalism at the hands of her violent, mentally-ill father.
Her father, who was raised Mormon, suffered from untreated sexual trauma by a childhood babysitter and projected it onto her, her mother, and her seven siblings. He claimed he was put on Earth to become president and save America from destruction because of “The Mission” he was tasked with from above. Due to his sacreligious teachings and musings, he was ultimately excommunicated from the Church of Latter-Day Saints.
Carrie’s father often chastised and shamed her for straying away from “The Mission,” and, at one point, prophesied she would be raped and killed once she left for college. No child could or should sustain such torment and abuse by an adult. Let alone a parent.
This dysfunctional lifestyle, compounded by constant moving, led to Carrie being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), suicide or depression and generalized anxiety disorder. Carrie hopes her book will offer hope to and comfort to other Americans who might be struggling as she once had.
“2022 was the highest number of suicides ever recorded in American history,” she told me. “it's the highest rate since the end of the Great Depression since 1941. So something's wrong. You have a lot of young people who are feeling an existential crisis. And I feel like with my life story, I had my life crisis and existential crisis before COVID. So I wrote the book with the aim of trying to share and hopefully teach and warn young people and just people in general who are struggling and provide some help.”
Carrie grew up in abject poverty and attended 17 schools. She could have turned to big government policies and government assistance. But she refused to let her past dictate the future. In fact, her life experiences reaffirmed the importance of private charity, limited government, and school choice.
“The antidote to big government is using private faith and private charity to help rehabilitate people in a way that the government cannot,” she added.
Sheffied credited a combination of faith-based counseling and cognitive behavioral therapy for getting her life back on track mentally, professionally, and spiritually. She hopes fellow conservatives learn to embrace--not dismiss--these therapies.
“I was at the top of my game in my professional life. But inside I was still unresolved,” the journalist said. “I believe God gave us therapy when it's done right: to help us process and understand. And honestly, if you hate the word therapy, just use the word counseling … Therapy is a modern word, but just the idea of even just talking to a priest or confession, and understanding the woundedness that you have and inside you and how it affects your decisions and the way you treat people and the way you respond to people.”
After more than a decade of agnosticism, she found her way back to Christianity--particularly a denomination of Protestantism--in December 2017 that is now spiritually fulfilling and healthy for her.
Carrie writes in her memoir that along her healing journey, she ultimately forgave her dad and learned to overcome trauma through leaning on what she calls a “healthy faith.”
“God is the source of our healing and, and also the source of our forgiveness,” she explained. “As conservatives we're all about faith, family, and accountability. I think all of those things are things that God wants for us.”
The Motorhome Prophecies author criticized President Biden’s State of the Union remarks blaming President Trump for the mental health crisis wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic. He said, “Remember the fear, record losses … a mental health crisis of isolation and loneliness. A president, my predecessor, failed the most basic presidential duty that he owes to American people: the duty to care. I think that’s unforgivable.”
She wished Biden struck a different tone, writing, “Healthy faith in God saves and restores mental health. My life is a testament to that. My hope is our country crosses partisan battle lines to tackle this escalating problem together.”
Motorhome Prophecies has been compared to now-Senator J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy and Tara Westover’s Educated. But readers will find that Carrie Sheffield’s memoir stands on its own taking the mental health crisis head-on and offering hope.