This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "The House of My Mother" by Shari Franke. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
Like this article? Sign up for a free trial here.
What happens when a family’s pursuit of online fame spirals into abuse and manipulation? How did a seemingly perfect Mormon family go from YouTube stardom to criminal charges?
Shari Franke’s The House of My Mother: A Daughter’s Quest for Freedom reveals the dark reality behind her family’s polished social media image. She exposes how her mother Ruby’s involvement with a cult-like coaching program twisted strict parenting into psychological torture.
Continue reading for an overview of this compelling book.
Overview of Shari Franke’s The House of My Mother
In August 2023, news broke that Ruby Franke, a family video-blogger (or vlogger), was arrested on aggravated child abuse charges. While some of her 2.5 million followers were shocked, many had long suspected that she was hiding something sinister behind her performance of perfect motherhood on 8 Passengers, her YouTube channel and brand. Some had even petitioned the government to investigate whether she was harming her children. How did the Frankes go from picture-perfect Mormon family influencers to a cautionary tale about vloggers and life coaches?
(Shortform note: Ruby Franke’s arrest came after her 12-year-old son escaped from the house through the window and asked a neighbor for help. Her arrest seemed to confirm some of her followers’ fears that the strict parenting style she became famous for had veered into abuse. It also prompted YouTube to permanently deactivate her account and delete her channel.)
Shari Franke’s The House of My Mother: A Daughter’s Quest for Freedom offers the perspective of Ruby’s oldest child. In her memoir, Shari provides an inside look at how the Frankes jumped into the family vlogging limelight, fell under the toxic influence of ConneXions (a cult-like life-coach program), and eventually fell apart. She wrote this memoir to set the record straight on what happened inside the Franke home and make a case against family vlogging.
(Shortform note: In addition to sharing her point of view, Shari’s memoir is a way to limit the public’s speculation about her and her family. In an interview, she explains that she wrote the book as a way to share everything she was comfortable sharing, including the events themselves and how she feels about them. Everything else, she says, she will keep to herself. She hopes that limiting speculation about her and her family will recover some of the privacy they lost when they got involved in family vlogging.)
This overview of Shari Franke’s The House of My Mother: A Daughter’s Quest for Freedom explores five stages of Shari’s story: her family’s life before vlogging, the 8 Passengers years, her family’s involvement in ConneXions, the family’s breakdown, and the family today. Throughout Shari’s account, we highlight three major themes in her memoir: growing up in a vlogging family, her mother’s abusive parenting, and her search for healing.
(Shortform note: To avoid confusing Shari Franke with other members of her family, we refer to each one by first name throughout this book overview.)
The Franke’s Life Before Family Vlogging
Shari conveys that the Franke family was far from perfect, even before they became vloggers. She believes her early childhood experiences show that Ruby projected an image of maternal perfection while subjecting her children to severe parenting practices. This section will discuss the beginnings of Ruby and Kevin Franke’s relationship, Ruby’s approach to motherhood, and the emotional pain Shari endured during her childhood.
College Sweethearts
Shari’s parents, Ruby Griffiths and Kevin Franke, met at Utah State University in 2000 and married three months later. Ruby was an 18-year-old from a strict Latter-day Saints (LDS) family, and Kevin was a 22-year-old engineering student from a more relaxed LDS family. According to Shari, Kevin was attracted to Ruby’s beauty and confidence. Shari adds that Ruby chose him because she believed she could mold him to her image of an ideal husband and use him to become the perfect wife and mother she envisioned being.
The Frankes Become Parents
According to Shari, Ruby was determined to have many children, seeing motherhood as her primary mission in life. She and Kevin had six children: Ruby, born in 2003, Chad, born in 2005, and four more children who were still minors when Shari wrote her memoir. (To protect their privacy, Shari left out their names and other identifying information from her book.)
Ruby’s Approach to Motherhood
Shari believes Ruby viewed motherhood as a divine calling but struggled with the realities of raising multiple children. While pregnancy brought her fulfillment, she was overwhelmed by the chaos of family life. Ruby’s strategies to cope with parenting included:
- Implementing rigorous routines to instill discipline and self-reliance in her children. For example, the children practiced music before breakfast, then made their own lunches and got themselves to school, even if it meant walking in the bitter Utah cold.
- Using verbal and physical punishment. For example, when Chad cut some of Shari’s hair as a joke, Ruby dragged him to the bathroom and shaved the middle of his head as punishment. She also slapped her kids when they misbehaved.
Shari’s Painful Childhood
Shari describes seeking but never receiving her mother’s unconditional love. She molded her behavior to match what her mother would like, hoping to earn her affection by suppressing her emotions and adapting to her mother’s volatile moods. But Ruby was never satisfied. As a result, Shari developed anxiety-related behaviors. She experienced nighttime fears and developed a habit of picking at her lips until they bled. Ruby never comforted her or taught her how to deal with her anxiety. Instead, she remarked that Shari’s habits would make her undesirable to potential husbands.
The 8 Passengers Years
While Shari’s early years were difficult, her life soon became much more challenging. In 2015, Ruby launched the 8 Passengers YouTube channel, slinging her family into the spotlight. This section will discuss how vlogging changed the Franke family’s lives forever. We’ll explore Shari’s experience of growing up in front of the camera and how her mental health worsened during her teenage years.
8 Passengers Changes the Frankes’ Lives
In 2015, Ruby found a new mission beyond motherhood: family vlogging. Shari argues that Ruby’s YouTube channel was a chance to prove herself as a matriarch worthy of admiration and to transform motherhood into a profitable business. Additionally, Shari explains that family vlogging was a growing trend in their Mormon community. Vlogging aligned well with LDS values because it was a way to bear testimony of God’s work in their lives, keep family records, and engage in missionary work by sharing their faith and values with a global audience.
8 Passengers Takes Off
Ruby’s channel gained popularity and turned the Frankes into family influencers. Shari recalls Ruby treating her channel as a business and working with dedication to make it successful. Ruby’s work paid off, and the channel grew exponentially. She reached 1,000 subscribers in July 2015, qualifying the channel for monetization, and by 2019, the channel had 2.5 million subscribers.
The Perks of Being an Influencer
As the channel grew, the family’s financial situation improved dramatically. Shari explains that the family went from living frugally to receiving constant product deliveries from brands sponsoring their content. In 2019, they bought a luxurious three-story house. Shari felt the new house was a studio, not a home. For instance, Ruby didn’t let the children decorate their rooms so they wouldn’t damage the photogenic white walls.
Growing Up in Front of the Ring Light
Shari explains that growing up under her mother’s social media spotlight was deeply uncomfortable. She recalls her mother constantly documenting family moments for online followers, including when Shari was in the hospital for mononucleosis. To make the content more engaging, Ruby demanded that her children act happier—or sicker, such as when Shari had mono—and constructed artificial domestic scenarios to record. For instance, she gave Shari a botched eyebrow wax for a video.
Shari’s Mental Health Worsens
During her teenage years, Shari experienced profound emotional struggles. She developed religious scrupulosity—a state of constantly fearing she had sinned. She felt that her mother didn’t love her, and Shari questioned what she had done wrong to cause this. Shari also resented not having any control over her life, and that her parents cared more about their brand than her well-being. For example, when Ruby and Kevin discovered Shari had a relationship with a boy, they forced her to change schools. This led Shari to have a panic attack, during which she contemplated suicide.
Despite Shari’s mental health struggles, Ruby resisted letting Shari see a therapist. She suggested that Shari’s symptoms were just a way to get attention, but Kevin eventually convinced her to let Shari get counseling. Unfortunately, Shari’s mental health treatment was short-lived. Shari told her therapist that she hated playing piano, something Ruby had forced her to do since age five. Later, the therapist invited Ruby into the session so Shari could tell her mother she wanted to quit piano. Surprisingly, Ruby agreed. However, she canceled Shari’s sessions soon after.
The Frankes Get Tangled Up in ConneXions
Despite their online image of perfect parenting, Ruby and Kevin struggled to raise their children. In their attempts to deal with challenging behavior, they hired Jodi Hildenbrandt, a parenting advisor who introduced the Frankes to extreme and even abusive discipline tactics. This section will discuss Hildenbrandt and her philosophy, how she treated Chad and Shari, and how Ruby became enmeshed in Hildenbrandt’s company, ConneXions.
The Frankes Hire a Life Coach
Ruby and Kevin couldn’t keep Chad under control. He was expelled from school after playing several pranks. Then, the family took a sponsored trip to Orlando in August 2018, but Chad refused to follow along with Ruby’s plans for creating content. Shari explains that he disrupted filming and sneaked out of his hotel room. A family friend recommended Jodi Hildebrandt, a counselor with a reputation in Utah’s LDS community for getting through to challenging kids. Hildebrandt’s profitable mental health program, ConneXions, included workshops, one-on-one coaching, and group coaching emphasizing honesty, personal responsibility, and humility.
Ruby and Kevin put Chad in weekly therapy sessions with Hildebrandt. According to Shari, he outwardly complied with the behavior changes Hildebrandt asked him to make. Ruby and Hildebrandt believed he was showing positive changes, such as becoming more respectful. However, Chad secretly maintained his independence. For example, when Ruby banned electronics for an entire summer, Chad would secretly break into the safe where items were stored to play his Xbox at night.
Shari Gets the ConneXions Treatment
Ruby and Hildebrandt used Chad’s apparent improvement as evidence to convince Shari to participate in sessions herself. However, Shari resisted because she was skeptical of Hildebrandt. She discovered that Hildebrandt’s license had been suspended in 2012 for falsely accusing a client of being a sexual predator. She also learned that Hildebrandt’s children no longer spoke to her. When Shari warned Chad about Hildebrandt’s reputation, Chad reported it to Ruby, who suggested that Shari was afraid of Hildebrandt because she had something to hide.
Shari eventually agreed to have sessions with Hildebrandt to avoid negative consequences from her parents. At first, Shari embraced Hildebrandt’s ideas. Hildebrandt encouraged her to adopt negative self-talk and to view her intelligence and confidence as problematic. She asked Shari to write down every time she thought of herself in a positive way, such as being proud of her exam results at school, as evidence of her arrogance. She spent weeks documenting her thoughts and reporting them to Hildebrandt.
During one of these early therapy sessions, Hildebrandt called Shari an “obedient little drone.” Shari mentioned in their next session that the comment had hurt her feelings, but Hildebrandt denied saying it. However, when Shari checked her journal, she confirmed her memory was correct. Afterward, Shari became more vigilant about Hildebrandt’s inconsistencies. The breaking point came when Hildebrandt claimed babies cry because they’re manipulative and entitled. This helped Shari realize how extreme and toxic Hildebrandt’s teachings were.
Ruby Goes All In on ConneXions
Despite Shari’s misgivings, Ruby incorporated Hildebrandt’s ideas and methods into her parenting. According to Shari, this only made her mother’s parenting more insidiously cruel. Now, instead of yelling or hitting, she implemented psychological punishments. For example, one Christmas, Ruby, Kevin, and Hildebrandt decided that the youngest kids didn’t deserve any presents and made them watch as the older kids opened theirs.
In addition to incorporating her ideas, Ruby joined Hildebrandt’s organization. Shari explains how her mother became a certified ConneXions coach, lead support calls and women’s groups, and regularly reported confidential information to Hildebrandt. Ruby also started incorporating ConneXions terminology into her videos.
Kevin Follows Ruby’s Lead
As his wife became more entrenched in the ConneXions community, Kevin felt uncomfortable. Shari explains that he went along with the program to appease Ruby, but he believed the women in the group hated men. For example, Hildebrandt claimed that behaviors like talking to a woman you’re not married to, or noticing she’s attractive, were as bad as infidelity. Many husbands in the families involved with ConneXions were pressured to leave their families for at least six months to work on themselves after engaging in these alleged acts of unfaithfulness. Despite these worrying aspects of the program, Kevin eventually bought into its ideas and methods.
ConneXions’ Similarities With a Cult
Reflecting on how ConneXions came to dominate her family, Shari points out several ways in which the program functioned like a cult:
- The program had a rigid hierarchy. Hildebrandt maintained absolute control and cultivated dependency from the members by becoming their only moral authority. Only she could provide them with approval and moral insights.
- The program encouraged a sense of superiority in its members. For instance, members believed they were more enlightened than people not involved in ConneXions.
- The program isolated members from outside relationships. It encouraged cutting ties with anyone who didn’t share the group’s beliefs, framing this isolation as a test of commitment. For example, Ruby cut ties with her parents and siblings during this time.
The Franke Family Falls Apart
The Frankes’ involvement with Hildebrandt and ConneXions led to the downfall of their social media business and their precarious family ties. This section will describe what happened to the Franke family after Hildebrandt moved into their home, including how Ruby pushed Kevin, Chad, and Shari away and hid the younger children from the outside world.
The Frankes Get Cancelled
In 2020, Ruby got herself and her channel cancelled, and the damage to their reputation was irreparable. In a video with Chad, he revealed that he’d been sleeping on a beanbag for seven months. According to Ruby, he’d lost his right to a bedroom after playing a prank on his younger brother. The revelation sparked public outrage and destroyed the family’s online image. Sponsors distanced themselves, and hundreds of thousands of subscribers left. The family became social media pariahs, while viewers combed through years of content for additional evidence of problematic parenting. In addition, Child Protective Services visited their home, though they didn’t find any evidence of abuse.
Hildebrandt Moves In and Shari Moves Out
In 2021, Hildebrandt moved in with the Franke family. Ruby claimed Hildebrandt was experiencing an attack from the devil and needed protection. Shari recalls how the household atmosphere became chaotic and secretive. Ruby began sleeping in Hildebrandt’s room to help her with night terrors—something she never did for Shari’s childhood terrors. In addition, Shari saw Ruby sneaking from her bedroom late at night, leading her to suspect an inappropriate relationship between them. Ruby also forbade Kevin from going upstairs, where Hildebrandt’s room was.
Shari escaped her family’s difficult situation when she began attending Brigham Young University. Although the campus was only ten minutes from their home, she says it was liberating to be away from her mother and Hildrebrandt.
Ruby Cuts Ties With Kevin, Chad, and Shari
With Shari out of the house, the family dynamic continued deteriorating. In July 2022, Ruby asked Kevin and Chad to leave for at least a year so they could work on self-improvement because she claimed they were both behaving selfishly. She also instructed them not to contact Shari during this time. Shari speculates that Hildrebrandt orchestrated Kevin’s exile by gradually destroying his self-esteem and suggesting he was inappropriately affectionate toward his daughters. She recalls running into her father on campus and trying to interact with him. However, he appeared to avoid her, and Shari concluded that he was unable to help her and her siblings.
Some weeks after Ruby shunned Kevin and Chad, Shari got a call from a neighbor telling her that her mom had left her siblings alone in the house for five days while she went on a trip. Shari called the Division of Child and Family Services (DCFS) and asked them to do a wellness check. They did, reporting that everyone seemed fine. When Ruby learned that Shari had called DCFS, she disowned her. She accused Shari of betraying her and demanded that she stop contacting anyone in the family.
Ruby Isolates the Younger Kids
After the family fracture, Ruby isolated her younger children. For a year, Shari had no information about her siblings’ well-being or whereabouts. Her neighbors told her Ruby had removed them from school and got rid of the family dog so the kids wouldn’t need to leave the house to take him on walks. Shari feared that Ruby might seriously harm her younger siblings or put their lives in danger. Shari made several calls to government agencies, trying to get them to protect the children, but to no avail.
The Franke Family Today
As Ruby’s behavior became more dangerous, Shari took the reins of her own life. She realized she needed to become mentally strong to help her younger siblings, and she began a healing journey. This section will explore Ruby’s arrest and trial, and how Shari and the rest of the Franke family are recovering from their years of abuse.
Ruby’s Arrest and Trial
On August 30, 2023, police raided Ruby’s and Hildebrandt’s homes. They were arrested and charged with multiple counts of aggravated child abuse. The two youngest children had been confined at Hildebrandt’s house and required immediate medical attention. They were placed on a temporary medical hold, and the state took custody of all the underage Franke children.
After the arrests, the County Attorney’s Office released Ruby’s handwritten journals documenting what she and Hildebrandt had done to the youngest siblings. For three months, they’d subjected the children to daily punishments intended to cleanse them from evil forces.
Ruby and Hildebrandt pleaded guilty but followed different tactics for their trials. Shari argues that Ruby portrayed herself as Hildebrandt’s victim. For example, she thanked law enforcement for saving her from a situation she claimed she couldn’t escape. Conversely, Hildebrandt maintained her delusions, claiming God spoke to her and that she loved the Franke children. The judge sentenced both to four to 30 years in prison.
The police also questioned Kevin, but he appeared unaware of his children’s living conditions. He explained that Ruby had asked him to leave a year earlier. From that point, he supported the family financially but had minimal involvement in his children’s welfare. Despite learning about the children’s condition, Shari says that Kevin initially expressed continued loyalty to Ruby.
The Family After the Arrest and Trial
Shari explains that one year after Ruby’s imprisonment, her family started the healing process. Kevin changed his stance on Ruby and her actions. He moved back into the family home and began working to prove that he could be a responsible parent to regain custody of his younger children, who remained in state custody at the time. Kevin and Shari also started rebuilding their relationship.
As part of their healing, the Frankes began trying to regain control of their story. For example, Shari and her family worked with a documentary director to share their experiences. In a surreal moment, they watched a television documentary about Ruby’s case while being filmed by the documentary crew they were working with. This experience highlighted the media exploitation of their trauma. Finally, Shari wrote this memoir to ensure her perspective was heard.
Shari’s Healing Journey
Shari expresses that she’s found genuine happiness through therapy and self-work. Additionally, she describes finding a chosen family who cares for her as if she were their child. She explains that the strength and clarity she’s gained have helped her handle the challenges she faced.
Her newfound clarity involved making four key insights:
1. Ruby’s behavior constituted emotional abuse. When Shari’s therapist confirmed this, she realized she wasn’t oversensitive or selfish as Ruby had always claimed. She began to see through the manipulation and understand that the dysfunction in her family stemmed from Ruby, not from her own shortcomings.
2. Shari developed a fawn response, a trauma response in which she would try to please others to avoid conflict. This insight helped Shari understand her pattern of appeasing others, which was a survival mechanism developed from years under Ruby’s control.
3. She internalized guilt, shame, and self-loathing. Through therapy, Shari began understanding how her upbringing affected her responses to difficult situations. She expresses that healing means learning to manage intense emotions and reclaiming her narrative by breaking cycles of fear and control passed down to her.
4. While she inherited some positive traits from Ruby, Shari has developed into her own person despite her mother’s influence. She is focused on breaking generational cycles of trauma so that she can someday become a loving and nurturing mother.
Shari’s Stance on Family Vlogging
As she looks to the future, Shari expresses certainty that she’ll be a different kind of mother from Ruby. She also says she’ll never expose or monetize her children like her parents did. She explains that when their family life became public entertainment, their private struggles were transformed into content for viewers. Even after Ruby’s arrest, the family’s story was exploited by media outlets worldwide, turning their trauma into sensationalized entertainment. She believes their grief became a commodity for consumption, reducing their suffering to spectacle.
———End of Preview———
Like what you just read? Read the rest of the world's best book summary and analysis of Shari Franke's "The House of My Mother" at Shortform.
Here's what you'll find in our full The House of My Mother summary:
- Shari Franke's account of being on the 8 Passengers family vlogging channel
- What it was like to grow up in front of cameras in a strict Mormon household
- What life was like before the vlog, the abuse that went on, and Shari's healing journey
