Shari Howerton

I was born and raised in Southern California. I grew up in a tightly knit religious community, led by the one pastor I had known from birth. I was also in an abusive marriage beginning at the age of sixteen. I was naive and had been strongly discouraged from education beyond high school. As a congregation, we were also discouraged from seeking counseling from anyone other than our pastor (and he was ill-equipped to offer valuable counsel). Therefore, escaping an abusive marriage was never on my radar. My focus was entirely on figuring out how to make the marriage succeed, how to protect my abuser from shame, and how to be a 'good enough' wife to 'make things better' from the very first incident of physical violence, which occurred in the first week of marriage.

In 1993, my family and many others sold our homes in California and followed our pastor to Tennessee. My spiritual and domestic abuse continued for another decade. In 2002, I finally left my abusive husband for good and filed for divorce. I also began to break away from the church I had been raised in.

In my first book, Breaking the Chains, I chronicled my life and the lives of others who were subject to control and abuse in a church I now view as a religious cult. I shared the profound challenges of leaving close friends and breaking free from a lifetime of harmful conditioning to find joy, hope and freedom in the cross of Jesus Christ. However, I left out the challenges of living with and breaking free from an abusive, narcissistic man. Although the two aspects of my life are intricately intertwined, I chose not to write about my marital abuse in Breaking the Chains because I could not do justice to both spiritual and marital abuse in one book, and I wanted to keep that book focused on spiritual abuse. But I have now written the other part of my story.

My second book (February 2014), Through My Eyes: Overcoming the Emotional Injury of an Abusive Relationship, chronicles my twenty-seven years as a battered woman (physically, emotionally and verbally) as well as how I broke free from those chains and began my overcoming journey.

Both books are deeply personal accounts of struggle. There's plenty of pain on the pages. But I have learned such important life lessons as I have walked the path God has allowed me to uniquely travel. I have grown in empathy and compassion. I have found purpose in suffering. And I have emerged from a lifetime of abuse as a stronger woman, with increased faith in God's goodness.

My husband and I currently live in "almost heaven" West Virginia. I'm a blessed and happy wife, mom, and "Grandma Shari" to three adored grandsons and (finally) one granddaughter. My passions are faith, family, friends and food. I also love to read and write.