Genesis The Podcast
Genesis the Podcast is a new way to connect with Genesis Women’s Shelter and Support and expand your thinking about domestic violence and related issues that affect women. GTP is also a trusted source of information if you are in an abusive relationship and need safety, shelter or support. Listen every week for fresh content related to domestic violence, to connect with world-renown professionals, participate in exclusive events and training opportunities, and take action against domestic violence.
Genesis The Podcast is hosted by Maria MacMullin, Chief Impact Officer of Genesis Women's Shelter & Support and the Host of the Podcast on Crimes Against Women.
About Genesis Women's Shelter & Support - Located in Dallas, Texas, Genesis provides safety, shelter and support for women who have experienced domestic violence, and raises awareness regarding its cause, prevalence and impact. Learn more at GenesisShelter.org
Genesis The Podcast
Breaking the Silence: A Rabbi's Daughter Confronts Decades of Abuse
Sara Sherbill's powerful memoir "There Was Night and There Was Morning" takes its title from the book of Genesis, establishing a profound metaphor for her life's journey from darkness to light. As the daughter of a respected rabbi who terrorized his family behind closed doors, Sarah lived a "split-screen reality" - presenting the perfect religious family image to the community while enduring horrific abuse at home.
The weight of this duality crushed Sara for decades. As the eldest of five children, she felt responsible for maintaining the facade of a wholesome religious lifestyle while privately suffering at the hands of her father. This burden of secrecy and performance dominated her childhood until she finally reached a breaking point in high school when concerns for her mother's safety led her to alert authorities.
What makes Sara's story particularly compelling is her unflinching examination of the complex relationship between religion and abuse. Her father specifically sought the rabbinate hoping it would "keep him in check," suggesting he possessed some awareness of his darker impulses. This revelation illuminates how religious structures can simultaneously provide cover for abusers while offering victims a framework for understanding their experiences. Sarah doesn't condemn religion itself but shows how it can be weaponized by those seeking control.
The redemption in Sara's story comes not through forgiveness or reconciliation with her abuser, but through finding her voice. After discovering her father's abuse had expanded beyond family to include young women in his Florida congregation, she began publishing essays about her experiences, eventually culminating in this memoir. Through writing, Sarah transformed shame into strength and silence into power, freeing herself from carrying the burden of her father's actions with the profound realization: "I was not the man who did this... I'm just his daughter."
Ready to break your own silence? Sara's journey from trauma to redemption shows how naming our pain can be the first step toward healing.
Today we meet Sarah Sherbel, survivor and author of the memoir there Was Night and there Was Mourning, a memoir of trauma and redemption. She joins us to discuss the book and her story of decades of abuse at the hands of her father. I'm Maria McMullin and this is Genesis, the podcast. Sarah Sherbel is the author of there Was Night and there Was Morning, a memoir of trauma and redemption, which tells the story of growing up in a fiercely loving yet abusive rabbinical family and her years-long journey to tell the truth about what was happening behind closed doors. Appropriately, the title of her memoir there Was Night and there Was Morning is a biblical reference taken from the book of Genesis, in a verse that establishes the creation of light from the darkness. By most accounts, the idea of light is good and darkness unwelcome or less than best. This verse Genesis 1, verse 5, also reveals the creation of a cycle, one where alternating periods of light and shadow occur, inferring one cannot exist without the other, or perhaps that, with time, each will be revealed. It is here that Sarah's story, as written in her memoir, begins.
Speaker 1:Living in the shadow of her secrets for decades, sarah uses her talent for crafting compelling prose to reach into the void of darkness and reveal the truth of her lived experience, an experience that is encapsulated by abuse of many forms and would define her life well into adulthood. Her memoir, which details both her trauma and ultimate redemption, releases her from the darkness of her past and allows her to walk in the light, perhaps for the first time in her life. Trapped within a cycle of abuse at the hands of her own father, a rabbi, who, by such a title and training, should stand for all things holy or all that is contained within the light, sarah was, by her own account quote beset by depression, a broken marriage and a lifetime of secret keeping, still living in the shadow of my father's abuse, even as I navigated a new relationship and motherhood. And despite so much abuse and darkness, there was a spark in Sarah and it grew into the light, would be contained no longer and demanded its release. Sarah defines the publication of her story as liberating, redemptive and life-affirming. From her strength and resolve. We learn about rising from the abyss of abuse to live the life she was meant to live.
Speaker 1:Listen to the end of this episode for a reading by the author from her memoir that expands on these concepts of light, darkness, love and life. This episode discusses experiences of child abuse, domestic violence, spiritual abuse, substance abuse, child sexual abuse and suicide. Spiritual abuse, substance abuse, child sexual abuse and suicide. Sarah, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, Maria. I'm really happy to be here.
Speaker 1:I'm excited to talk with you. I want to let you know I read your book and I thought it was amazing and insightful and just so courageous of you to tell your story in a memoir. That was incredibly. I know it was a painful experience, but just so compellingly done and inspirational really for survivors and others, because you grew up in a family with strict religious traditions. Your father was a rabbi and the Jewish faith became central to every aspect of your lives. So before we get into the story that's in the book and what is really your story, can you give us the backdrop of the story you tell in your memoir?
Speaker 2:Absolutely Well. First I just want to thank you for your kind words that you said about the book. This is kind of just like a dream come true for me to be able to share my story and have it resonate, especially with survivors. That just kind of fills me with happiness.
Speaker 2:The backdrop to the story is I grew up in Chicago, as you said, the daughter of a rabbi.
Speaker 2:I am the eldest of five. My father was a pulpit rabbi of a thriving congregation and, as you say, maria, religion really did kind of dictate all our behaviors from, you know, keeping kosher so that's what we ate to observing the Sabbath once a week, which you know meant no use of electricity or phones or television for that 25 hour period. As I grew up, as I got older, my family actually became increasingly religious over the years, so that by the time I was in high school, you know, was also about dressing very modestly and wearing only long skirts and that kind of thing. So I was in a very, very religious environment growing up and at the same time, you know, I was kind of keeping this secret. My siblings and my mother and I were all keeping this secret, which was that behind closed doors, when my father was not being a pulpit rabbi. He was an abusive man. He was physically and emotionally abusive to my mother and to me and to my siblings.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that comes through in the memoir. You go into a lot of detail but can you help our listeners understand kind of that part of the book and what happened to you?
Speaker 2:Sure. So you know, growing up it really I felt that I had a job. Especially as the eldest of five, I really felt that it was my meant to kind of almost advertise the benefits of living this kind of very wholesome, all-encompassing religious lifestyle. So you know, if you have five children who are all walking around, you know, smiling and happy and very polite and very well-dressed and very deferential to any authority, and you know good nature, do well in school, have a lot of friends, all these things, it wasn't just the pressure that I think you know maybe all kids feel, but there was this extra layer that we were really meant to be, kind of the forward facing picture of, you know, almost the embodiment of my father's belief system, and really almost advertised the wholesomeness of that, which really was in direct contradiction to what we were actually experiencing when we were at home.
Speaker 2:So that kind of split screen reality, that kind of duality, as you can imagine, is very hard to navigate when, know, when you're young, you don't question it because that's just the only reality that you know. But as I got older I started to think, wow, something is so not okay here. And if you read the book you will see by the time I am a senior in high school I reach a breaking point because I become concerned for my mother's life in terms of my father's abuse toward her escalating, and I inform the police and that kind of just sets in motion a whole cascade of events. That's kind of what I talk about in the first half of the book, and then the second half of the book is kind of more me navigating the aftermath of abuse. So as an adult, you know how do you live with and negotiate and metabolize kind of all your experience while still trying to be, you know, functioning, human and adult. And in my case you know wife, mother, writer, etc. In my case you know wife, mother, writer, etc.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so there was significant abuse happening for decades. You can say within your family.
Speaker 2:Yes, it was decades.
Speaker 1:And it wasn't as you explained. It wasn't just you, it was your brothers and sister and your mother as well. And it's really interesting if you read the book and then to hear what you're saying now about being the face of a wholesome Jewish life family at your youngest age and when your father was younger, and then the way that he ends up in the end, which is the pendulum swung. I mean completely the other way, and we're going to get into that a little later, but it was so interesting to me to hear you say that because nothing could have been further from the truth.
Speaker 1:Now, keeping on the idea of religion for a minute and how that played a role in your experience, you chose a book title that is a biblical reference, in particular, the Creation of Light Out of Darkness. And this, the creation of light out of darkness and this conjures up a lot of ideas, for example, darkness as being bad or evil, or living in the shadows, or perhaps that things are always black and white. You know there's no gray area. Did any of these concepts play a role in either your decision for the book's title or the lens through which you viewed your experience with abuse?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. So I really appreciate your question because I think it's very insightful. You know, there was a few elements to choosing the title. One was that because my life growing up, as I write about, was so steeped in religion, and not just the rituals of religion but also the texts of religion. So, you know, I went to schools where we were always, you know, studying the Bible, and you know other commentators. So it was really important to me to have in a title something that was not just beautiful and evocative but that also, you know, really kind of captured my attachment and involvement in the Jewish text. I mean, the Bible really was.
Speaker 2:you know, the Old Testament was really our guide, I mean you know we studied it and we read it every Saturday in synagogue and that was really the framework for our life. So that was kind of how we got to the title In terms of the actual substance of it, this idea of the titles. There was night and there was morning. So, as you point out, I'm introducing kind of this idea of darkness versus light, night versus day, goodness versus evil versus light night versus day, goodness versus evil, you know.
Speaker 1:So maybe that wholesome look versus what the reality was.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And so what I like about the title is it kind of sets up those, you know, almost that dichotomy, but in a way it's maybe misleading, because what I really wanted to do was write a book that was not black and white, that was not. You know, my father is all bad or religion is all bad or I'm all good even.
Speaker 2:You know, as I grow older, you know I made mistakes. I did things that you know I'm not necessarily proud of also. So one thing that was so important to me in working on this book was really not to write a book that was simplistic. I really wanted to get at the nuance and the complexity and, as you say, the gray area because, let's be honest, you know, 90% of life is a gray area.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think it's very rare when things are all bad or all good. Now you could say, well, child abuse is certainly all bad, it's true, obviously. But my father, as a human being, I don't feel is all bad, even though, as you say, as his life went on, he certainly did deteriorate and become involved in some very destructive behaviors. And yet it was a priority for me not to write a hit piece and not to write something that just portrays him as a monster, because I don't think any human being is a monster. I think we're all born pure, we're born innocent, and some of us either experience a kind of traumas when we're growing up that take us down a different path, or we're enacting traumas and causing traumas which set us on a different path. But I really wanted to write a book that showed full scope of my father's humanity and also the full scope of my own humanity humanity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you accomplished that and I wasn't trying to insinuate that the book was black and white, because it isn't. There's a lot. There's so much going on in the story that you know you can really get lost in the details of it all. Going back to something else you said, because you mentioned there was a couple of points in time where you said, well, this is not right, what's happening in this household is just not normal. Was there a point in time when you recall that you realized what was happening was abuse and it was not normal or acceptable?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so there was actually a moment I was in middle school I actually remember it quite vividly my parents had a subscription to a magazine and the cover story I mean, this is, you know, the late 80s. The cover story was about child abuse and I was always, you know, just like a kind of avid reader and always a curious, even as a kid, I was just very curious and I was always reading not just books but magazines, newspapers. I was just kind of voracious and wanting to understand the world. And I remember reading this cover story in a magazine about child abuse. I was, you know, maybe 12 or 13. And I remember thinking, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, there's a name for what's going on in my house. Hold on a second. And that was kind of.
Speaker 2:I don't know if it was a turning point, but it was kind of an epiphany for me that this has a name. You know before that, you know, as children we really we construct our own language and we're fumbling around trying to find the right words to match our experience. You know. So as a little girl, I would write in my diary, you know, like oh, dad had a blowout today. Or, you know, dad went crazy today, you know, and I just thought, well, that's my dad, he's crazy. But I didn't understand until I read this article when I was in middle school.
Speaker 2:Wait a minute, this is child abuse. It has a name. Other people experience it. It's a phenomenon, it's a crime. It's a crime. Right, it's a crime. It's a crime, it's a crime. And it's interesting, Even after years of thinking about this and writing this, it's still not foremost on my mind to it's. It's interesting I, even after years of thinking about this and writing this, it's still not foremost on my mind to say it's a crime. I still think of it as like, well, it's just a private family matter, you know, which, of course it isn't. So that was a moment and I remember I got very excited in a strange way that I had this name for it now, and I remember telling my mom because I was very like, wait a minute mom I figured it out.
Speaker 2:You know I figured out what's going in our home, what's going on, and I told her and you know it didn't have any material effect on our lives in any way, it was just kind of like, well, that's interesting. But I think in my brain it planted a seed that language is the way out. It almost told me, if we can name something, if we can put a word to match our experience, that's the gift of language. And in a way you could say that was almost the tiniest seed for me becoming a writer who wanted to write about my experience.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's incredible becoming a writer who wanted to write about my experience. Yeah, that's incredible. That's so insightful into your own becoming and coming to terms with what was happening to you, and it's just unfortunate that your mother could not really be there for you in that moment when you were naming that you believed you were an abused child and in fact, were.
Speaker 2:Yeah, as long as you bring up my mother. I'll just mention, as I've gotten older, I've. I was very angry at her for many years, as you can well imagine, and I write about it in the book quite extensively. Certainly as a teenager, but also through my 20s and even parts of my 30s, I was really harboring a lot of anger and resentment.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I think for good reason. I'm not saying that that's necessarily wrong. I think it's a natural outcome. But I will say that in recent years, and especially through the writing of the book, I was able to kind of gain a lot more compassion for my mom and I did kind of it shifted a little bit the way I saw her. I used to see her more as someone who enabled abuse to happen to us, and I'd say now, in middle age, I see it differently. I see it more she was a mother who was trying her hardest to keep some semblance of normalcy alive, while she herself was being very badly abused. So that's just a whole, you know, kind of dance that's been going on my whole life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and in fact, just because I've read the book and I kind of understand the backstory of all of this, most women who are victims of domestic violence will not leave because, number one, they don't have a place to go and they're not leaving without their children.
Speaker 1:So what would have really happened to your mother and all of you had she just picked up and left and I know there were times when she tried and it just?
Speaker 1:You know it can be a long journey when you're trying to keep everyone safe and yet you yourself are a lethal risk at the hands of this abuse.
Speaker 1:I just want to mention a couple of little things related to domestic violence that occurs to both women and children, because the rate of co-occurring domestic violence and child maltreatment or abuse are really worthy of more study, as the rates are not well quantified or known, but are estimated to be between 40 and 60% of children whose mother is being abused are abused themselves. Now, these statistics are based on some older studies and not all that much information is available, and we can assume that the actual rate of experience is much higher, because not all occurrences are reported and, like yourself, I I mean this went unreported for decades. Yes, so going back then to just your your story once again and the idea that this was a very religious household, it was a Jewish household and there were certain roles and rules that everyone had to follow in accordance with the Jewish tradition. How much do you believe religion played a role in the abuse?
Speaker 2:Such a great question and it's really kind of an endlessly fascinating subject to me right, like I think I've gone through so many different you know hypothetical scenarios in my life. Like I think, well, what if, when my because my parents actually neither of them grew up religious. They both grew up in almost completely secular households, so it wasn't like this was a lifestyle that they had grown up with. They actually sought it out as young adults, when they were in their 20s. So sometimes, as a you know kind of macabre exercise, I would go in my mind and think, well, what if, you know, when my father, you know, was 22, instead of going to Jerusalem and ending up in a you know studying in a rabbinical seminary, what if he had gone to law school in New Hampshire?
Speaker 2:You know, just like you know the sliding doors of what would have happened, you know, and I think, would I have had a different life Would he not have been an abusive father. Was there something about the confluence of religion and abuse that facilitated or enabled the abuse? You know, facilitated or enabled the abuse. You know, it's such a fascinating thing for me to think about and of course, I'll never know the answer, and I don't really. Even now that I've been thinking about this and writing about it, you know, for many years, I still, even now, don't have a totally clear sense of what the relationship was between the relationship between the abuse and the religious belief. So, for example, my mom once told me in confidence something that my father had shared with her in confidence, and she shared this with me when I was an adult I mean, I think I was 40 when she told me this and it shocked me. She told me that my father once confided in her, that he specifically became a rabbi. He sought out the rabbinate as a profession because he hoped it would keep him in check. He hoped that by adhering to this not just religious lifestyle but a public religious lifestyle, that it would somehow curb some of his darker tendencies, which apparently he had a little bit of self-awareness about. Now again, my mom didn't tell me this until I was in my 40s, so you know too late then. But it's very fascinating to me to think about how religion is used, not only in my family, of course, but in many families and in many religions obviously not just Judaism Every religion. You will have people who take the religion and are either using it as a cover for their own bad behavior or maybe they're using it to, almost in a perverse way, help keep them on the straight and narrow. It's not clear to me exactly. I think some people seek out God and religion from a very sincere, authentic place. There's, of course, many religious people who are authentically good people.
Speaker 2:I'm not here to pass judgment on religion as a whole Right but I think that it can also be a bit of a mask for many of us. It can also be a bit of a mask for many of us, and you know, it sounds funny to say that I've done a lot of research for this book, because it's a memoir and it's my own life. So you would think, well, what do you have to research? You just write about your own life.
Speaker 2:But I actually did quite a bit of research into clergy abuse in general and I read, you know some definitive histories, let's say, of like abuse in the Catholic Church and you see, sometimes with you know, many years later, the priests who you know have been found guilty of abuse and later maybe share some of their experiences. You see, it's a very convoluted, complicated, almost dangerous relationship between religion and abuse, because as human beings we have this ability to contort religion to suit our own purposes. So you can almost twist religion, and many religious leaders do twist religion, so that they don't necessarily have to look at their actual behavior.
Speaker 1:Spiritual abuse, abuse in the name of religion, and so on. All the things that you're describing are. There's episodes in their own right for a podcast.
Speaker 1:We could talk about that we probably don't talk about it enough on the show. I'd love to learn more about that and talk with experts about that. But I think to your point, all of it played a role and that moment of self-awareness that he had actually, I think, is very telling, and how he was using religion to keep himself under control, but also, when that didn't work, it was a justification for his influence and power and control over the family.
Speaker 2:A hundred percent. You know, and that's where, like I said, I am I'm not anti-religion in any way and I think if you read the book you'll see I, you know, shared in the book my own very real struggle to you know, try to reclaim pieces of the religious tradition and hold on to pieces that are meaningful for me, because I'm not a person who says, you know well, all religious belief is I don't think that but at the same time I do think, you know, embedded in our religious traditions, and not only in Judaism and other religions also is, you know, unfortunately often a very patriarchal structure that favors the male head of the family, or the male head of the church, or the male head of the synagogue, or the male head of the religious school, or the choir leader, or whoever it is, and it's often a man. And I think in our culture we have traditionally been very deferential to that authority figure, whether it's the priest, it's the rabbi, it's the imam, whoever it is, they are the authority figure.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I think anytime whether it's religion or it's something else anytime you're giving away your authority to somebody else, you run the risk of losing yourself, and I think it's a very dangerous thing actually.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a great point. Now, just keeping on the religion theme for a minute and going back to that very powerful title for the book, you noted in the tagline of the title that this is a story of both trauma and redemption, that being your trauma and your redemption. But there were brothers and sisters, and your mother who also endured abuse, alongside you. I'm curious how they responded to you telling your story in this memoir.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I will say, you know, there's definitely been an evolution over the years, because I didn't, you know, start writing this book one day and publish it the next day. It's been a years long project. So I would say my siblings and my mom were always, you know, kind of aware that I was working on this book in some fashion or another over really decades. So there was a journey there, you know. I would say initially, for example, my mom was a bit skeptical about this.
Speaker 2:You know, I think she you know rightly so was concerned about herself being exposed, exposing our family, and I think she was also concerned about me and my mental well-being, and is spending hours and hours and hours a day, every day, excavating this material really the best thing for my mental health, especially because I have fought so hard to be in an okay space mentally? Is this really the best way to spend my time and is this ultimately going to be a good thing? So I think initially there was skepticism, there was apprehension, there was hesitation, like sometimes I would call my mom on the phone and tell her I was working on my book and she would say in a concerned way you know, are you sure that that's really the best thing for you to be doing?
Speaker 1:do you?
Speaker 2:think this is a good thing for you to be doing, and I and I explained to her. You know what, mom? The thing that was hard about my life is not the writing of it. The thing that was hard was when it happened. Writing about it is not the hard part, that's actually healing part.
Speaker 2:So I assured her that I actually did think this was a good thing for me and I'm very gratified to say that over the years there really was, like I said, an evolution, so that by the time I had a complete manuscript and the book was ready to be published, I sent an early copy of the manuscript to my mother and to my siblings and I think by that time they were just 100% supportive. And I would say, since the book has come out, I mean, my mom flew in for my book launch in Washington DC. She's recommending the book to all of her friends and you know. So there's there's been a shift and I'm I'm really really grateful for that shift, because the abuse that our family experience went from being something so shameful, so secretive, to being something that we've all kind of not just accepted but almost like embrace, like yeah, this is our family story And're going to put it out. And here it is in a beautiful book and you can read about it, you know.
Speaker 2:So I it's. It's been a really meaningful and gratifying experience.
Speaker 1:That's so interesting. Now we touched on this, but I need to come back to it, because your father's abuse seemed to last his entire lifetime. Yeah, it did not end when you became an adult and a mother, and, in some ways, it was intensified due to his substance use. When did you realize that your father's situation was worse than you had even thought or maybe experienced, and how did you respond to it?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I had kind of distanced myself from my father. I would say by the time I was in my late 30s I had really like kind of taken a step back. I wasn't you know, I was a bit estranged from him. And then I got a call from my brother, my youngest brother who was living down in Miami where my father was living at the time.
Speaker 1:And now, at this point, your parents are not together.
Speaker 2:At this point. So my mother had left him. My mother left him. She left him after 40 years of marriage. Yes, so she had left him a few years earlier and, of course, let's just acknowledge how much courage it actually takes to leave an abusive marriage. In my mother's case, it you're correct, my mother had already left. My brother was down in Miami where my father was living, and I got a call from my brother describing some of the most horrific things I've ever heard in my entire life in terms of my father's escalating drug use, which I had really not been aware of.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was really shocking to read about.
Speaker 2:And it was shocking to me as well. I didn't know my father was a drug user, I mean certainly not a hard drug user. That was shock, absolutely shocking to me. And even more shocking, of course, was this revelation that he was abusing young women in his new congregation in Florida.
Speaker 2:This, it really cannot be underestimated, the huge shock that this was to me, because I always thought, you know, well, my father abused us, but you know we're his family, so in a way it's okay, you know, but how can you abuse strangers? And that just goes to show, I mean, just the twistedness. You know that I had been kind of raised to believe, well, okay, well, if you abuse your family, you know, well, you know, I guess that's okay. But it's the real problem when you abuse other people. I mean, it was like I couldn't believe it that it was both.
Speaker 2:And I have a line in the book where I say I thought my father was sane enough and discreet enough to know that it's one thing to hurt your family, something else to hurt strangers. And once I found out that his abuse was not only continuing but actually escalating, that's when I said no more and that's when I decided I am going to start writing about this in any way, shape or form that I can, and so, as soon as I found out that this was happening, I started publishing essays about my father's abuse, because that was a breaking point for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can't imagine that it wouldn't be a breaking point for you, because that's some pretty serious stuff that was going on and it goes into a lot of detail, some pretty serious stuff that was going on and it goes into a lot of detail in the book.
Speaker 2:My youngest brother was the first person who kind of alerted me to this fact that my father was abusing young women in his congregation. To make a long story short, this woman young woman she was 22 at the time she did end up contacting me directly over text and we did develop a relationship of sorts in the sense that I was texting with her on and off for several years, trying to help her and trying to get her. Number one just to stay away from my father who was still actively abusing her, and number two to try to really encourage her to seek out psychological help. And number three to try to really encourage her to seek out psychological help. And number three to also try to get her legal help.
Speaker 2:In the end I failed at all of those three objectives and she was completely dependent on my father financially and for drugs and I think also, if you can believe it, for spiritual guidance. And that's really the shocking thing was that she didn't consider him her friend or her mentor or her confidant. She considered him her rabbi and she spoke about him that way. This is someone who's giving her drugs and also abusing her sexually and physically and emotionally. So when you think about that, within that she was still able to consider him, her rabbi goes to show you how deeply entwined and complicated trauma can be.
Speaker 2:You're weaving these threads together where on one hand, here's a man who's being abusive to her, supplying her with drugs, but at the same time she would tell me that she could talk to my father about things she couldn't talk about with anyone else. She would go to him for spiritual guidance and religious counsel. So, as you can imagine, maria, that just kind of blew my brain wide open. Imagine, maria, that just kind of blew my brain wide open and I became really committed to trying to get her help. But in the end realized and I write about this process in the book in the end I realized I just have to help myself Because if I try to be a savior to this young woman, it was taking me down with her.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really profound. Was your father ever prosecuted for any of the offenses?
Speaker 2:No, not at all, and I talk about this in the book as well. There was a network of support around him, so extended family members, friends, people very established in the community who protected him, and I've had a lot of anger at those people and writing this book, if you can believe it, has helped me to release a lot of that anger, because I feel that you know, I can't control anyone else's behavior and everybody is going to have to make peace with their actions at some point in their lives, and it's not for me to dictate, so I just felt that writing about it was probably the best chance that I had at getting any sense of justice, and by sense of justice I mean a scrap of justice.
Speaker 2:Obviously, in his lifetime my father did not face the kind of consequences that he perhaps should have, so for me, in a way, writing this book was my way of trying to see justice done.
Speaker 1:And I respect that, and it comes through in the writing. Let's also talk about the idea of redemption, because there's an aspect to it as the writing being redemptive for you. How do you identify that?
Speaker 2:So I think there were many years where I felt so ashamed, and certainly as a child. Without question, it was a shameful subject and the whole idea was to keep things on lockdown and for nobody to find out.
Speaker 2:But, even as an adult woman, even once I was married and had a child of my own, I felt very much like I don't want this to be part of my life. I'm trying to live a new life, I'm trying to form my own family, I'm trying to get out from under this. And that had been kind of my position for years. And then, you know, like I said, I was galvanized by all the events that transpired and by the time I decided to work on the book, I felt that I was at a point where I was saying I'm not going to be ashamed anymore, I'm not going to live feeling that I need to protect anyone, that it is my job to keep anyone's secrets or that I have to feel bad for even one minute, that this is my family history. I've done nothing wrong.
Speaker 2:And I have a line in the book where I write you know, I was not the man who did this to this young woman, I'm not the man who did it, I'm just his daughter. So you know, I was not the man who did this to this young woman, I'm not the man who did it, I'm just his daughter. So you know, I think for years I had kind of taken this yoke on my shoulders of you know I need to, you know almost do penance in a way for my father's sins and then coming to a place, through writing and through investigating the story, of saying I free myself of this, I free myself of this.
Speaker 2:In giving words to this story, I almost was trying to make it something separate from myself. It's its own entity, but I'm not going to carry it around anymore.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that took a lot. It took a lot of courage, it took a lot of time to put this in writing and to get it published. And I can see it. I mean, I can see it in you that and I can see why you would, you know, want to expose the fact that this wasn't your crime. It's hard, because I know a lot of survivors have this carry the shame of the crime that was committed to them, but you very eloquently pointed out that you're not the one that should have the shame. He should be ashamed of his actions and what he had done. All abusers should be ashamed of their actions and the pain they've caused.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so a hundred percent. And so I just reached a point where I just felt like it was becoming very heavy for me as I was getting older and as I was mothering my own child. It was becoming quite heavy on me and I felt, why should I have to bear this alone? My father was the head of a community.
Speaker 2:Both of my parents gave and gave and gave to their community in terms of helping people when they were ill, helping people who lost parents or children or siblings. I mean, my parents were of service to their community, and so I reached a point where I said to myself my parents lived such a community-based life and yet here I am suffering with this secret in isolation, and I reached a place where I thought, why should I have to carry it alone? Let me put it out there, and perhaps we can all carry this burden. It should not have to be mine alone to carry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely Now, while this memoir is your first book, it's not your only published writing. You've published essays on motherhood, mental health and domestic violence that have appeared in the New York Times, slate, the Forward and elsewhere. Tell us a little bit about that work.
Speaker 2:Sure, well, as I told you, when I found out that my father had been abusing other people, namely young women in his congregation, as I mentioned, that really galvanized me and I thought well, I've been working on this memoir for so many years, but in the meantime, let me start just writing about it. And so I wrote an essay. The first essay I wrote about my father was almost 10 years ago, and it was about finding out that he was dying. He had an advanced form of cancer, and it was about my struggle, my conflict within myself. Do I go visit my dying father, who at that point, I'd been estranged from for a number of years? Do I go say goodbye? Do I try to have some kind of you know, final closure? You know? So that that was the first essay I wrote.
Speaker 2:I wrote another essay about when my father died and the question of how do you mourn an abusive parent. This is something. I really looked for resources. I looked for other books, articles that have been written about it. I couldn't find that much, and so instead I wrote about it myself, which was you know, how do you grapple with the idea, when a parent dies, they're still your parent, no matter what they did or didn't do? You only have one parent and or, you know, you only have one mother and one father.
Speaker 2:And so I wanted to really write about that kind of very deep internal conflict of, on one hand, wanting to kind of acknowledge and mark my father's passing but at the same time, feeling that the traditional ways of doing that, like attending a funeral or giving a eulogy, or saying the Jewish prayer, the Jewish mourner's prayer, I felt that I didn't want to do those things, you know. So then the question becomes how can you mark the death of a parent who's been abusive, you know? And how, how do you navigate that? Because it's it's it's a difficult, it's a difficult thing to navigate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, To say the least. Before I let you go, will you share with us your website and how people can follow you on social media share with us your website and how people can follow you on social media?
Speaker 2:Oh sure, so please follow me on social media. I'm on Instagram more than I should be. It's my name, Sarah Sherbaugh. S-a-r-a is my first name. S-h-e-r-b-i-l-l is my last name.
Speaker 1:You can find me on Instagram and my website is also just my name. So, yeah, please find me there Now. We have something special for people who've listened all the way through this episode. You have a passage from your memoir that you are going to share with us.
Speaker 2:Yes, I am, and before I share it, I just I want to say one thing, which is that, you know, in this conversation we've been talking a lot about, you know kind of the nefarious uses of religion and how religion can be a destructive force, or how it can be, let's say, used as a destructive force. But I also just want to say that, even though I'm not formally religious anymore, I still consider myself a religious person, even though I'm not following the laws and the traditions in the same way that I used to. And so, before I read this passage, I just want to say it's really important to me in this book to show that religion can be wielded like a weapon, but it can also be a source of meaning and even a source of healing.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 2:I'm going to read a passage from the book. It's toward the very, very end of the book and it's about a realization that I had when I was on a walk one morning. Now that I am no longer a child, I have learned some things about God. God is not the voice inside your head that tells you you are bad. God does not care about the length of your hem or the length of your sleeve. God is bigger than that. God is the voice you can call upon from across a deep chasm. God is the thing you draw on when you have nothing left to draw on. God is the force that tells you you will be okay. God is the power above you, around you, inside you, Wherever you feel God. That is where God is.
Speaker 1:Genesis Women's Shelter and Support exists to give women in abusive situations a way out. We are committed to our mission of providing safety, shelter and support for women and children who have experienced domestic violence and to raise awareness regarding its cause, prevalence and impact. Join us in creating a societal shift on how people think about domestic violence. You can learn more at genesisshelterorg and when you follow us on social media on Facebook and Instagram at Genesis Women's Shelter, and on X at Genesis Shelter. The Genesis Helpline is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, by call or text at 214-946-HELP 214-946-4357.