Revealing truth, beauty of the ‘feminine genius’

CARRIE SCHUCHTS DAUNT works with the John Paul II Healing Center as a prayer minister and presenter. She grew up in Tallahassee, FL, and earned a bachelor’s degree in speech communications from Berry College in Rome, GA. She has been married to her husband, Duane, for 23 years and has eight children. They live in Tallahassee.

Daunt has a passion for proclaiming the truth and beauty of the feminine genius. She also has led Bible studies and presented talks on marriage, theology of the body, and authentic femininity.

She is scheduled to speak at the Legatus Women’s Enclave to be held November 7-10 at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, CO.

The John Paul II Healing Center is headquartered in Tallahassee. Programs offered include healing, training and equipping, and working with clergy and seminarians, married couples, and men and women.

Daunt wrote the 2020 book Undone: Freeing your Feminine Heart from the Knots of Fear and Shame, a collection of raw and redemptive testimonies from real Catholic women who have encountered healing. She and Duane also co-authored the 2021 book Man Your Post: Learning to Lead like St. Joseph.

What do you plan to speak on at the Legatus Women’s Enclave?

I will be speaking on the “feminine genius” together with Fr. John Bartunek and Melissa Perez, and together we will be facilitating opportunities for prayer and deeper freedom for the feminine heart.

Tell me about the work of the John Paul II Healing Center. It looks as though it is family run.

Yes, the John Paul II Healing Center was founded by my dad, Bob Schuchts. My dad was a Catholic therapist for nearly 30 years. As his faith deepened, he began to incorporate prayer into his sessions.

The result was transformative. Slowly he began to share his practices and wisdom with the wider Church by offering conferences and retreats that eventually evolved into the John Paul II Healing Center.

Today, we facilitate conferences and retreats for men, women, married couples, seminarians, religious sisters, priests, and bishops. Our mission is “Transformation in the Heart of the Church,” and the enduring impact has been purely the work of the Holy Spirit.

Tell me about your book Undone.

After more than a decade of serving as a prayer minister with the center, I heard woman after woman share a similar thread of shame. Even though each woman’s story was vastly different, each of them shared the same experience that I had early in my own healing journey: we each believed that we were the only one who needed to hide parts of our story. We each believed we were the only ones who felt this way. We each believed every other woman had it all together.

After starting my own healing journey, a few brave friends invited me into their own vulnerable stories. I came to see that I was not alone in my experience with shame. Shame is a part of every woman’s story since the Garden of Eden. Yet, shame loses its power when it no longer remains hidden.

The book is composed of 15 vulnerable stories from women who experienced freedom from shame. These testimonies have become a compelling invitation for other women to have the courage to face their own stories of shame and to find deeper freedom in their identity.

You and your husband, Duane, wrote a book on leadership and St. Joseph.

Man Your Post: Learning to Lead like St. Joseph is the book my husband and I wrote and edited with other Catholic leaders in the Church in response to a generation plagued by fatherlessness, fear, and indecision. We realized men need a mentor like St. Joseph. Through the virtues outlined in the litany of St. Joseph, different Catholic leaders share their testimonies of learning to practice virtue through their own life obstacles and struggles.