About Dr. Shonda Carter​
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I spent years telling her to shut up.
Turns out, she was the whole point.
For years, there was a voice inside me I couldn't stand.
She showed up at inconvenient times — in the middle of a church service, at the end of another meeting where I had given everything and received nothing, in the quiet after I had held everyone else together again.
She had one question. It was embarrassing in its neediness.
I would laugh when I told my best friend about her because her voice reminded me so much of Debbie from the Addams Family Values movie...
"What about me? What about my needs? What about Debbie!"
I handled her the way a good Christian woman handles inconvenient feelings:
I quoted Scripture at her. Galatians 5:24, Proverbs 31, etc.
The flesh had to be crucified. This was just selfishness wearing a spiritual costume.
I told her to shut up. Regularly. Firmly. With theological backup.
She kept coming back.
It went on like this for years. The voice was getting louder. But I kept drowning it out. Until someone else heard her.
I cried out to my "spiritual parents." I expected "the usual," a prayer and a scripture reference. What I got instead stopped me cold.
My pops said: It sounds like you need to go back to school.
"I had been telling the most honest part of myself to shut up for so long, I'd almost convinced her to."
— Dr. Shonda Carter
I want to be honest about what going back to school actually looked like.
It took me ten years to finish my BS (Criminal Justice).
Ten years. Because I couldn't afford the books.
I am not offering that as an inspirational bootstrapping story. I'm offering it because the woman reading this needs to know that the path that led to two master's degrees and a Doctor of Ministry started with a woman who sometimes couldn't afford course materials — and went anyway.
I was not happy about returning to school, either. I want to be clear about that. Elder Lester's words were true — I had even heard something similar in prayer more than once — but I had developed a very useful spiritual practice of not hearing things I didn't want to act on.
God, apparently, was not deterred.
When I finally talked with an academic advisor, she said two words I had never heard before in my life.
Spiritual formation.
I knew immediately that this was what I had been circling for years without the language for it. I signed up before I fully understood what I was signing up for.
That is, I have learned, how most of the best things happen.
I have always been a filmmaker.
It just took me a while to say it out loud without waiting for someone to correct me.
Long before the degrees, I was drawn to video and advertising (forget Samantha, I wanted to Darrin Stephens) — to the particular power of a story told through image and sound, to the way a single scene can unlock something in a person that a sermon or a book never quite reached. I didn't have language for it as a calling. I just knew that film did something to me that felt, in retrospect, a lot like formation.
When it came time to write my dissertation....I made a documentary, "Michal: A Documentary of Devotion, Dismissal, Devastation, and Divine Design".
"Stepping into Story: Creating an Environment for Spiritual Formation" was the title of my dissertation, and the moment the two halves of who I am finally introduced themselves to each other. The scholar and the filmmaker, sitting in the same room, working on the same thing.
I have been making films ever since. Each one centers a woman in Scripture who was handed to us incomplete, reduced to a warning, a footnote, a cautionary tale, with the complexity surgically removed. Each film is my attempt to return what was taken. To let her be whole on screen in a way the Sunday morning version never allowed.
This is not a side project.
This is the work.
All of it — the direction, the storywork, the films — comes from the same place.
I became the person I needed before I even knew who she was becoming. And now I sit with women who are where I was: holding everything together on the outside, and hearing a voice on the inside they've been told to silence.
I don't tell them to shut her up.
I help them listen.
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Spiritual Direction
One-on-one sacred accompaniment through storywork — for women whose formation has outgrown the container they've been given.
II
Storywork Guide
The practice of returning to the chapters of your life with fresh eyes — not to relive them, but to finally hear what they were always trying to say.
III
Doumentery Filmmaker
Self-produced biblical documentaries centering the women Scripture recorded and the church largely overlooked. Made to be watched, felt, and sat with.
The alphabet behind my name is real. So is the price it cost to get there.
I didn't study to impress anyone. I studied because I was finally given permission to take my own formation seriously — and once I started, I couldn't stop. Each degree was less about the credential and more about the next room it opened.
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Dissertation:"Stepping into Story: Creating an Environment for Spiritual Formation" — completed as a documentary film.
The theological foundation underneath everything — the language that helped me understand what I had been experiencing without words.
Where the academic and the personal became impossible to separate — and where I stopped trying to keep them apart.
Trained in the art of holy listening — the practice of accompanying another person's soul without agenda, advice, or the need to fix what only God can complete.
"Let's get down to the Nitty Gritty?"
I collect vinyl records because I believe some music was made to find you — and you have to slow down enough to let it (plus- I am very nostalgic if you haven't guessed already lol).
I photograph the ordinary because I think God is in it, and most of us walk past too fast.
I have strong opinions about film, about Scripture, about the women the church has mishandled, and about the particular kind of tired that doesn't have a Sunday school answer.
I am a rulebreaker, not because rules don't matter, but because I've sat with too many women whose formation was stunted by the ones that didn't. I believe the Spirit moves in the silence after a film goes dark just as surely as in the moment the altar call goes out.
I believe Hagar deserved better. I believe Michal was not the villain. I believe Rizpah was not crazy.
And I believe the voice you've been telling to shut up has something important to say.
I'd be honored to help you hear it.
You found this page for a reason.
That voice that brought you here?
She was right.
Begin with a conversation. One session. No commitment beyond showing up.
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StoryLogian Podcast
A podcast designed to connect our stories to God's Glory. Dr. Shonda carter explores biblical stories (and a few personal ones) through the lens of Spiritual formation, Theology, and human experience.
Workshops
Unity in Healing
My workshops offer a space for individuals to come together, share their stories, and find solace in a community that understands their journey. Through mutual support and understanding, we strive to promote healing, resilience, and a sense of belonging.
Spiritual Retreats
Navigating Change
Every woman carries a story. Chapters of joy, pain, hope, and becoming. But what if the Author of all creation is inviting you to see your story through His eyes?
StoryLogian retreats are creative, story-centered that blend personal storytelling with biblical narrative. My retreats help women see how their stories connect with God's larger story .