Episode Details

In this episode of The Neil Haley Show, Neil “The Media Giant” Haley welcomes author Carolyn Mannila Harper, author of Why Didn’t Anybody Ever Tell Me About This? A Mother’s Search for the Living God. Carolyn shares the deeply personal story behind the book, her decades-long journey as a caregiver for her son Marty, her struggles with faith and discouragement, and the spiritual experiences she believes transformed her life.At the center of Carolyn’s story is motherhood.Her son Marty began experiencing serious seizures as a child. Carolyn recalls doctors recommending institutional care when he was very young, but she and her husband refused. They made the decision to raise him at home and care for him themselves.That choice became a lifelong commitment.Carolyn says Marty continues to experience seizures today and requires significant daily care. Rather than framing faith as a promise that every hardship disappears, she describes learning to live with circumstances that never resolved the way she originally hoped.Her search for answers ultimately became a search for Jesus.Carolyn had believed in the Bible since childhood, especially the stories of Jesus healing people. Desperate to help her son, she attended healing services and began asking deeper questions about faith. Eventually, she says the search became less about receiving the miracle she wanted and more about surrendering her own life to God.One Sunday became a major turning point.Carolyn felt compelled to attend church despite not having been active for years. She eventually entered a small Pentecostal congregation, where the first sermon she heard discussed the biblical account of a boy suffering from seizures.For Carolyn, the timing felt extraordinary.She describes that experience as the beginning of a much deeper relationship with God and says she returned to church later that same day.Carolyn also speaks openly about alcohol.During a difficult period of family life, she says drinking had become part of her routine and something she increasingly wanted to leave behind. During prayer at church, Carolyn says she experienced what she understood as a moment of spiritual deliverance that helped her stop drinking.Her husband continued struggling with alcohol for years and eventually died from liver disease. Carolyn’s experiences later introduced her to Al-Anon, where she began understanding that she could not force another person to change.The book also explores the emotional realities of caregiving.Carolyn describes raising Marty through childhood, adolescence, and adulthood while managing seizures, behavioral challenges, medical emergencies, hospitalizations, and periods when he required extensive physical care.She is candid about moments when exhaustion and discouragement became overwhelming.At one particularly difficult point, Carolyn remembers experiencing a frightening thought about giving up entirely. She says she rejected it and never acted on it. That experience became part of her desire to encourage other caregivers who may feel isolated or hopeless.Carolyn especially wants mothers caring for children with serious disabilities or chronic medical needs to know that someone understands how exhausting, painful, and emotionally complicated that responsibility can become.Her message is not that caregiving is easy.It is that perseverance can coexist with exhaustion.Carolyn believes her faith gave her the strength to continue caring for Marty through circumstances she never imagined facing. She describes him today as an adult who still requires the kind of protection and support normally associated with a much younger child.Throughout the conversation, Carolyn repeatedly returns to the idea of trust.She says some of the hardest moments came when she tried to solve everything herself. Over time, she came to believe that faith meant continuing forward even when she could not control the outcome.That belief became the foundation for Why Didn’t Anybody Ever Tell Me About Th