In her new book Life Is Lifey: The A to Z’s on Navigating Life’s Messy Middle, Sarah Shahi detailed a harrowing encounter with her father, where he threatened her with a firearm. Speaking about the traumatic experience and her father’s drug addiction, the Black Adam actress claimed that her father planned to kill her and then kill himself.
Sarah Shahi details her father’s struggle with addiction in new book
Sarah Shahi, best known for her role in Sex/Life, released a new book, Life Is Lifey: The A to Z’s on Navigating Life’s Messy Middle, which also featured an extremely traumatic incident from her childhood.
“My father, God bless his soul, was a drug addict,” she wrote in the book (via EW), “He was abusive not only to my mother, but one fateful summer afternoon, to me, too.”
Detailing that her father was in the middle of a “bad episode,” she wrote, “He took me outside, held me on his hip, and held a gun to my head.” She continued, “I was six and don’t remember anything prior to this moment. But I remember what happened after. I remember how cold the metal was against my temple. I remember the way he held me, his head hung low, too heavy to lift, as silent tears ran down his face.”
Her father kept telling her that she was “too good, too pure, to be living in this world,” and that “it was time for us to ‘go home.'” She added, “His drug-fueled plan was clear: kill me, then himself.” She further added, “In his twisted mind, my mother would follow, taking her own life in despair.”
Thankfully, her mother intervened before things got worse. “The sound of his gut-wrenching sobs pulled her outside, like a siren. She froze. Her breath caught in her throat,” she wrote, “I saw my mother’s face collapse, dropping six feet below ground when she saw me in my dad’s arms. I could hear her heartbeat, a slow echoing thud. It was as if the air had thickened, every small detail magnified in perfect, painful clarity. And there we were, in that split-second moment, frozen in time.”
Shahi remembered that her mother managed to disarm her father. “She moved toward him quietly, with a gentleness as if she were approaching a wounded animal, fragile and sacred,” she recalled, “I don’t remember her exact words, only the murmur of her voice. She reached for the gun, her hand open and waiting, and he surrendered it to her, the metal slipping into her palm as he crumbled, collapsing onto her shoulder.”
“Without a word, she wrapped her arm around me and ushered me inside,” she added. Of course, the severity of the incident was not clear to her at the start because of her age. But it did leave a lasting impression on her.
Sarah Shahi’s father passed away in 2015.
