Anomaly: Chapter 1

Sarah Centrella's childhood memoir

This is by far the scariest thing I’ve ever publicly written or posted. It’s the beginning of my most vulnerable writing yet—my attempted memoir. My first attempt to write it was in 2006, and since then, I’ve written hundreds of pages, scrapped them all, shoved it aside, and started from scratch at least a dozen times. I’ve always struggled to get the “voice” right—something I still feel I haven’t fully achieved. As a self-help author, writing narrative is terrifying. It’s not what I do, and it’s far outside my comfort zone.

But last night, when I couldn’t sleep, I read a note on Substack that encouraged memoir writers to release their work one chapter at a time as standalone posts (something I’m already doing with my book Think It). They suggested focusing on each post as an independent story rather than obsessing over the whole. As a blogger, that approach made a lot of sense to me.

So, as scary as this is, here is the preface and first chapter of my memoir Anomaly.

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Book Preface

This is the story I’ve always known I must tell. Long before I was a writer, I dreamed of writing my memoir because I knew this story had to be told. But with this knowing came immense pressure—pressure I put on myself to get its telling right. It also came with a decent dose of fear: now the world would know my story, a story I’d kept hidden my entire life.

It’s not that I’ve spent my life denying my past or trying to cover it up. It’s more that I didn’t know how to talk about it. Anything I’d ever say about my childhood or how I grew up was simply unrelatable to anyone I’d ever met, and I realized at about fifteen years old that it was just easier not to talk about it. It made other people more comfortable if they thought I was normal, and so, I learned how to be normal. Then, at a certain point, I really couldn’t reference my upbringing without it seeming attention-grabbing, “one-upping,” or too shocking and in need of far more explanation than whatever that moment allowed.

So, I kept it to myself.

But every day of my adult life, this story has haunted me, screaming to be heard. So, to all the people throughout my life that I tried to gloss over stories of my past, avoided the topic altogether, or made a silly joke about it and then changed the subject—this is why.

How do you say one thing without telling the whole story?

My mother has lived an unparalleled life, and in her quest to find meaning, she’s hurt a lot of people. Writing about her has felt like a behemoth task, and one I’ve struggled with over the past fifteen-plus years, through multiple attempts to write this story. Her mental health struggles combined with her fanatical religious beliefs made for an often-torturous upbringing. But I’ve always believed it was important to write this with raw honesty and to be truthful about my experiences and memories, because I know I’m not the only child raised by a bipolar, mentally ill parent. It’s important to shed light on what that’s truly like, even when it’s ugly, because if more of us do, more parents who need help might seek it and protect their children from the abuse that untreated mental illness can cause.

It’s hard to describe Mom’s addiction to her religious beliefs because, my whole life, they have been so far removed from normal reality that I’ve never been able to talk about what it was like being raised by someone so irrationally obsessed. The closest comparison I can think of is being raised by a drug addict or severe alcoholic, where rational thought is no longer at play. That’s what religion and her beliefs did to Mom; they controlled her every thought and action.

My mother is an avid and vivid storyteller, which was something I truly detested growing up because she would tell the stories I share here (especially in Part 1) ad nauseam to anyone who’d listen. And so, I grew up hearing them recounted with great detail over potlucks, at Bible studies, or even to strangers at the laundromat. To her, each of these stories was a glamorous tale that proved the magic of her faith and the miracles she and God had jointly created. This is the ONLY lens through which Mom views the past. But it’s thanks to these stories and the many times my sister Kim, Jenny, Nonie, and other family members have recounted them with me over the years that so many details arise in the story of my early childhood.

This is my story, seen through my perspective, and is true to my memories and experiences. Many names in this book have been changed to protect the privacy of most individuals.

Here is the whole story.

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AI Generated image by Sarah Centrella

PART ONE: The Early Years

1974-1983

Chapter 1

“A Crooked Road”

I was born in the back of a Volkswagen bus in the hospital parking lot. If it’s true that the way a person enters the world sets the trajectory for their life, then that explains a lot. My chaotic arrival may have been my first life lesson: prepare for turbulence.

My parents had been driving for hours over the winding mountain roads from Chico, California, to a small Adventist hospital in Napa Valley. It was an exceptionally hot late-June afternoon, the kind where you could taste the dry heat and dust whipping through the open windows. The old VW camper van rattled with every bump on the narrow two-lane highway, the tires skidding slightly on loose gravel as my father took an unexpectedly sharp corner, much too fast. The steep grades pushed the van’s engine to its limit, overheating until it whined and spewed steam from the hood forcing dad to pull over and refill the angry radiator, yet again.

He gripped the steering wheel so tight his knuckles turned white, his heart pounding. They were running out of time. He kept glancing between the precarious road ahead and the rearview mirror, where my mother lay sprawled on the van’s fold-out bed, her face contorted in pain. Every few minutes, another contraction seized her body, her hands pressing against her swollen belly as she gritted her teeth to keep from crying out.

Sweat gathered in rivulets on my father’s forehead, dripping down his face and soaking the collar of his shirt. His long, curly hair whipped around his eyes from the open windows as he pressed the gas pedal harder, the engine straining under the pressure. He could hear her labored breathing over the high-pitched whine of the engine and the tunnel of the wind, which only made his muscles tense further with apprehension and helplessness.

“Breathe, honey. Just—just hold on,” he begged, his voice filled with frantic fear and nervous excitement. “We’re almost there.” He promised for the fiftieth time in the past hour.

For her part, Mom wasn’t too worried. This was hardly her first rodeo. At twenty-seven, she’d been through this drill enough times to be familiar with the process. She was calm, almost nonchalant between contractions, telling my father that the baby would likely just “fall out,” and that his only job would be to catch me. So, he could stop worrying. The thought of this terrified my father as another contraction gripped her body.

He wasn’t ready for this.

But Mom remained confident. She had the kind of faith that only came from having already survived three other births, and she reassured him that if anything went wrong, God would fix it. Her vast experience with birthing had covered most possibilities, but she trusted in divine intervention for the rest. “All will be well,” she said again, trying to reassure him. This was to be her fourth child—her third birth—and she was certain she could handle it. My 20-year-old father, however, kept reminding her that this was his first child, and he wasn’t exactly thrilled at the thought of pretending to be an obstetrician on the side of a country road.

The difference in their energy was palpable. What was she saying? That she didn’t care if they made it to the hospital in time or not? Was she trying to have this baby before they arrived? She must be delusional from the pain, he thought. Just get to the hospital, John, he told himself over and over.

Mom’s first experience with childbirth came when she was just fifteen, giving birth to my oldest brother, Eric. Her pregnancy, once impossible to hide, became a shameful scandal. My grandmother Wesley, fiercely protective of her family’s reputation, was determined to erase any trace of it from the country club gossip mill. Ashamed and furious, she pulled Mom out of high school and sent her to live with her own mother, hoping to keep the whole situation under wraps until the baby was born. It wasn’t just a matter of physical distance; it was full blown intentional exile, a clear punishment wrapped in the guise of “saving face.” Ever since Grandma Wesley had gotten re-married to a high powered executive when mom was six or so, she’d pretty much hated having mom around anyway. She had a new husband now, and they’d had two kids together, and ever since mom had been a thorn in her side.

Mom had no say in the matter, no say in the fate of the child she carried, much like she had no say when her parents forbade her from marrying the baby’s father. Grandma Wesley made it clear: if mom even considered it, they would disown her for good. So, naturally, Mom went and married him anyway. But in the end, the joke was on mom because she wielded no real decision-making power as a minor with an underage husband. My grandmother, with her calculated control, stepped in and made sure that, despite all their plans, the marriage was immediately annulled. The moment Eric was born, he was whisked away for adoption, and Mom was forced to sign away her rights. A baby taken from her arms before she could even hold him, a marriage dissolved before it started.

For this, and countless other reasons, Mom and Grandmother hate each other.

Andy came four years later—baby number two, born to Mom and her second husband, Bob. This time, the birth was far less dramatic, though still marked by a sense of detachment. Mom went to the hospital alone, her second experience with childbirth largely shaped by the absence of her partner and any family or friends. Bob, who was either off getting drunk or long-haul truck driving—depending on the day—wasn’t there to share in the experience. It didn’t matter much to Mom, though; by this point, she had grown used to carrying the weight of responsibility on her own. The birth itself was, in comparison, surprisingly uneventful. Doctors and nurses moved in and out, the cold, sterile environment less traumatic than her first experience. She was given the usual drugs to ease the pain, the sterile smells of antiseptic filling the air. A baby was placed in her arms afterward, but the moment felt hollow. There was no elation, no joy. It wasn’t that she didn’t love Andy, but the overwhelming sense of isolation in the process—and the reminder of the loss of Eric—dulled what could have been a celebratory occasion.

But Mom’s real confidence in delivering me came from the fact that she figured nothing could be worse than the birth of my twin sisters Kim and Shelly five years earlier. If she’d survived that birthing nightmare, she could handle this—no problem. The memory was still fresh in her mind: the doctor showing up to the delivery room smelling of whiskey, his attitude as bitter as the liquor on his breath. He was visibly annoyed, having been dragged in on his night off, and he didn't exactly inspire confidence. With little care for her comfort, he grabbed the forceps and yanked the twins out by their heads—no drugs, no concern for mother or children, just raw gripping pain. That experience had been a turning point for Mom. She decided, right then and there, that if she was going to have any more children, she’d do it on her own terms. She'd never trust a doctor again.

This is why, by the time I was forcing my way out of her uterus, Mom was fairly unbothered.

But Dad—well, he was a different story. He had no idea what he was getting into. He’d never even held a baby in his life, let alone helped bring one into the world. The thought of having to deliver his firstborn child in an emergency situation horrified him. He’d pleaded with Mom throughout her pregnancy to let him take her to the hospital when it was time for the baby to come. It took a lot of convincing, but eventually, just hours before, Mom relented after realizing her labor had already started. Her uncompromising stipulation was that he take her to the Seventh-day Adventist hospital near Napa, or nowhere at all. So, Dad grabbed their things, threw them in the van, arranged for someone to watch my sisters, and helped Mom into the camper’s bed.

The rest of the drive to the hospital was a blur for both of my parents.

Dad screeched to a halt at the ER entrance, his foot slamming on the brakes with an urgency that could only come from pure, unfiltered adrenaline. In his blind panic, he leapt out of the driver’s seat so quickly he forgot to put the van in park. The old VW camper, still idling, began rolling slowly toward the exit, unnoticed. His heart was racing as he sprinted around the van, flinging open the rear doors and shouting—no, screaming—for help. Mom’s bent legs greeted him, spread wide, her skirt up around her waist as she wailed through another contraction. The hospital staff began appearing from nowhere, a dizzying swarm of white coats and frantic energy. But before anyone could scoot him out of the way, my shellshocked father instinctively reached out his arms between her open legs, and into them, I slid.

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About the Author: Sarah Centrella is a multi #1 best-selling author, master life coach, executive coach, speaker and the Founder of VIVIAMO.

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