Author Page

I’m Abi Carpenter: Christian trauma therapist, author, daughter of King Jesus, wife, church member, home chef, dog-mom, and friend. I write for the same reason I do therapy. Healing is slow, it’s rarely linear, and most of us are trying to do it while holding down a life. What I’ve found is that women don’t need one more voice telling them to try harder. They need voices of those gone before them to say, there is hope.

My writing sits where clinical practice and faith meet, not one dressed up as the other. Real therapeutic tools, real Scripture, no pretending the two have to compete.

Miracles have happened in my life. It just took time. That’s most of what I have to say, and it’s why I keep writing it down.

I was raised around the best storyteller in the South: my Papa Joe. Before I ever wrote, he told stories. Around a campfire, about the Ooga Booga in the woods. As we sat in my cousins’ bunkbeds all squeezed together, the anticipation grew, knowing he was going to jump and scare us at the end of the story. He was an artist, a husband, and a father.

I started writing as a young girl. My very first author’s award was as a kindergartener, winning the Young Authors Award in Richmond Hill, Georgia. I had written a short story about the way my grandma’s home made me feel walking into warm cookie smells. I went on to write more short stories in elementary school that only my mom and dad read.

Middle school. Ahh, middle school. At that time I went to Central Texas Christian School in Temple, Texas. I had seventh grade English with Ms. Finkenbinder. I don’t remember much of what was taught, but I remember how much we laughed in her class together. English became a lighthearted place for me.

Eighth grade came along, and life hit the fan. I’ll write about that someday. My world collapsed in many ways, and my response started to come out in ways like tearing others down because I was hurting. I remember looking at my eighth grade English teacher, Mrs. Beck, in the face and saying, “I hate English class.” She looked at me and said, “That makes me very sad.” This started to melt my defensive little 13 year old heart slightly. That year I learned to construct an academic essay, recite Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and read the Odyssey and the Iliad. Fond memories of that English class.

Carrying on into high school, I was forced to write essays in a public school setting while I was battling home life issues, boys with inappropriate agendas, and a male teacher who told me, “Well, it’s a good thing you’re pretty,” when I didn’t know the answer to a question. My love for writing diminished and my need to be accepted grew. High school is a bit of a blur through family issues, trying to fit in, falling deep into temptation of the world, and teenage drama. I started to lose that love of writing,  begrudgingly writing about To Kill a Mockingbird and Where the Red Fern Grows. All I remember about high school English in public school is my senior year English teacher, who told us, “I never wanted to be a teacher. I dreamed of being a nurse but wasn’t smart enough to do that.” Teaching was not her first choice, and we could tell. That year was still clouded by relationships and drama, but Jesus entered my heart that year and changed my path.

Through grace and wisdom I ended up attending Dallas Baptist University, and fell deeply in love with Jesus and English. I studied English Education for four years. I remember my junior year taking an English elective on American literature pertaining to slavery, taught by Dr. Michelle Henry. Wow, can that woman teach. I was entranced when she taught. The books we read were tormenting. Psychological and dark. But the themes I learned were powerful and lasting.

The best essay I ever wrote to Dr. Henry was actually not an assignment. It was a personal email to her, as I had missed the due date for a major assignment and was going to fail. I poured my heart out in ye olde English style. By God’s grace alone she called me into her office, had a good laugh, and I was able to submit the assignment. Before leaving DBU, I published a poetry collection in the DBU literature magazine DOXA about watering your soul with Christ.

Post-college, I taught junior high English to public school students on Title I campuses. Not exactly English academia, and not exactly what made my literature heart sing. Not long after stepping into that career, I became a burnt-out and stretched-too-thin teacher. In my second year teaching, my partner teacher quit three weeks into school and I absorbed her classes, meaning I was teaching 40+ thirteen-year-old students at once. Wow. Only the Lord sustained me. This also brought me to my knees and began a several-year mental health journey that ended in me leaving the education system and pursuing a career as a Christian trauma therapist.

In this season, the Lord has reignited my heart for sharing stories. I first wrote a Christian mental health workbook, Selah, as I was looking for a resource to host women’s mental health groups and there was nothing quite what I needed. I did not write this to sell many copies, merely to have a resource I needed.

Right now I am starting a new project about Jesus as our heavenly husband. This is an idea that was born in my freshman year of college at DBU. I was a single young woman, and Jesus met me and taught me what a covenant with Him meant. I cared so much about this idea that I self-tattooed the symbols 1J419 to the inside of my left ring finger. You read that right. Self-tattooed. I used a safety pin and black pen ink to stick and poke the numbers. This stands for 1 John 4:19, “We love because He first loved us,” which represented to me that I am in a covenant with Jesus. Now, as a married woman, this symbol has meant so much to me through the years of an imperfect and sanctifying marriage.

I now seek stories of other married and have-been-married women who have had the same intimate connection and covenant with Christ. This journey as an author is at the very beginning. I am prayerful for the ideas and opportunities that Jesus will lead me into. Not my will, but Yours be done, Lord.

If you made it this far, thank you. You have no idea what this means to me. I pray you stick around for what’s next.