At six years old, still hurting from his father’s abandonment, he is left in the care of a Monster who does the unthinkable, then threatens death if he ever reveals the truth. Harrison turns to religion for protection from his fears, real and imagined. As he grows, his God’s voice drowns out the Monster's old threats. A new life emerges: one of love, music and ministry. For a while, Harrison buries the darkest demons from his traumatic past—the ones only his God knows about. But when the blessings stop flowing and new catastrophe strikes, Harrison spirals into an existential crisis, questioning his sanity, mortality and his God. He must now navigate the threats from a new Monster: his own faith. What will he risk losing in order to know the truth and become who he is meant to be?

On Monsters and Phantoms lifts the veil on a life forged by trauma, which sculpted a man into the image of someone not himself. A bold and honest look into adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and religious trauma, it peers into the soul of religious fundamentalism, challenging you to question everything, and daring you to seek the answers.

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A blend of transformational memoir and therapeutic writing, On Monsters and Phantoms unapologetically explores the collision of my childhood trauma, religious indoctrination and a rare disease. The crippling damage created dysfunction and myriad mental and physical health problems for me, as well as severely warped my identity and world-view. It was only through telling my story and responsibly questioning my belief system that I was able to heal from my debilitating anxiety and suicidal thoughts and become resilient.

The evangelical/fundamental Christian Church is woefully ignorant in knowing how its message of salvation and damnation wrecks people and creates cognitive dissonance few ever understand until they themselves deconvert. Once they do, they begin to see just how convoluted and miserable their lives have become from embracing a message that doesn’t land like the Church thinks it’s landing. The Church is also dreadfully ill-equipped to understand how its message of “truth” impacts people who have suffered from childhood religious and other trauma. The Church mistakenly believes that it – via the Holy Spirit – is a panacea to heal everyone’s PTSD/anxiety disorders/depression and restore them to health and joy, past trauma be damned. In short, the Church fails to recognize and acknowledge that it is itself a major source of trauma, and that often it reinforces the trauma cycles people experience. The Church, in my view, is reckless, dangerously irresponsible and intentionally neglectful of the larger issues at play. Most people are too afraid to speak up.

My story provides suffering people one method on confronting their self-sabotaging behavior born from trauma. Then, potentially, they can discover a new awareness about themselves, journey beyond their distress and re-author their life, as I did. As you’ll see at the end of the book, I left behind beliefs that became destructive for me, then allowed myself to embrace new understandings about me, my purpose and the world around me. Life looks very different to me now. I’m not who I once was.

For those battling depression, excessive fear, anxiety and/or addiction, On Monsters and Phantoms may help you connect the dots of your life and see things anew, as you may not know of or understand the link between your traumatic childhood experiences and your current self-sabotaging reality. Why do you think, believe and behave the way you do? Why do you make the choices and decisions you do? The answers are often found in the culmination of our life’s experiences, if we have the courage to explore them and make new meaning from them, as I did. When we do that—when we question and challenge all the messages we’ve received from the sources around us—we empower ourselves to reject the old and accept the new. Change—and healing—becomes possible.