Woman, 43, reveals horrifying details about 'traumatizing' childhood with schizophrenic father who forced her to become a DRUG DEALER when she was just FOUR years old - recalling how she spent her preschool years 'cutting up weed' and 'wielding a knife'

A woman has candidly lifted the lid on her very turbulent upbringing that saw her complete her first drug deal aged four after her schizophrenic father taught the then preschooler how to wield a knife.

J. Dana Trent, now based in Raleigh, North Carolina, spoke to DailyMail.com about her terrifying childhood after publishing a memoir titled Between Two Trailers earlier this week.

The 43-year-old, who works as a full-time community college professor, wrote about how she had helped her 'schizophrenic drug-lord father chop, drop, and traffic kilos in kiddie carnival-ride carcasses across flyover country' from a very young age.

She has since elaborated further on some of her earliest experiences before revealing how they have shaped her, adding: 'I have to do the hard work of trauma recovery every day.'

J. Dana Trent, now based in Raleigh, North Carolina, spoke to DailyMail.com about her terrifying childhood after publishing a memoir titled Between Two Trailers earlier this week

Speaking exclusively with DailyMail.com, Dana began by unpacking how her parents' own childhoods were fraught with trauma - with her father being physically abused and her mother suffering emotional torment.

'My father was the oldest of three boys. His parents whipped the eldest two and doted over the baby and so there was always a lot of tension in his household [among] the three brothers,' she said.

'As a result of the daily beatings, my father ended up being a wild child. The violence that happened in his home... he ended up transferring it elsewhere by running street gangs in the small town of Dana, Indiana, with a population of 600.

'So my father grew up in knife fights and brutal playground brawls and throwing knives at school and it wasn't really until ninth grade that his parents realized that he needed help.

'It was probably the time of a schizophrenic break for him but in 1950-something there weren't the resources to treat schizophrenia like we have today.'

She continued: 'His father sent him to Culver Military Academy where he killed a colonel's horse - further evidence that he was very unwell. He ended up getting kicked out that summer....

'His upbringing was evidence of his mental unwellness but so often it manifested as this quasi-cult leader, gang leader, larger-than-life entertainer who always was magnetic and garnered a group of very devoted friends and followers.

'While he was unwell, he was also very charismatic.'

The 43-year-old wrote about how she had helped her 'schizophrenic drug-lord father chop, drop, and traffic kilos in kiddie carnival-ride carcasses across flyover country'

Speaking exclusively with DailyMail.com, Dana (pictured with her mom) began by unpacking how her parents' own childhoods were fraught with trauma

But Dana's mother had a rather different start in life.

'Her upbringing was the opposite. She was the baby of five and she grew up on a very calm 1950s tobacco farm in rural North Carolina,' Dana shared.

'My parents were similar in that they were both country kiddos but in her family she was doted upon. Her father always ensured that she had a fresh seasonal wardrobe from the most expensive dress shops.

'She was a beauty queen. She won her hometown beauty pageant when she was 16 and so she was very gaunt and gorgeous and had lovely bone structure and skin.

'The interesting thing about her was - even though her mottos were "pretty is as pretty does" and "a smile to all she greets, a charm to make each memory sweet" - which gives you this idea of this beautiful porcelain doll - at home her father was mentally unwell.

'He had bipolar, he ran an illegal slot machine business and while he didn't beat his children the last thing he ever said to my mother was "bye baby, I love you." And then he locked himself in the family's black-and-white tile bathroom and shot himself with his favorite revolver.'

Discussing her parents as a duo, Dana shared: 'You can see the similar trauma between these two larger-than-life characters even though one was violently beaten at home and the other was subject to this emotional and psychological torment of this suicide.'

The couple met when they were both working at a psychiatric unit.

She has since elaborated further on some of her earliest experiences before revealing how they have shaped her, adding: 'I have to do the hard work of trauma recovery every day'

Dana admitted that her parents 'were the kind of folks who got wild airs of ideas,' adding: 'My mother was in her late 30s at the time and my father was adamant that he wanted a daughter but they were having trouble conceiving'

'They met on a locked inpatient ward in 1977 in Cincinnati, Ohio, and they were on what they called "the other side of the keys,"' their daughter dished.

'They always told stories about their patients and working on that ward when they met. They would always grab keys from their pockets and jingle them and say to me "the only difference between us and them is who has got the keys."

'What they meant by that is that although when they met they were locking patients in, they knew that at any given time they could be the ones being locked in.

'For them there was always this fine line between well and unwell. When they met on that locked ward, even their patients said, "This is a terrible idea for the two of you to get together romantically."

'One patient said to them, "This is bound to end in combustion." It was very evident I think to other people that a relationship that begins in a psych ward is bound to end in madness. And it did.'

Dana's mother had a son - called Lee - from a previous relationship who seemed to have endured his own unstable bond with his mom.

'My brother had a really intense relationship with my mother because after her father committed suicide she was never well again,' she said.

'She had her own suicide attempts. The most serious of which was almost completed when Lee was five years old and she went away to do three months as an inpatient when he was in kindergarten.

'He had always known her as unwell.'

Dana's father's temperament grew increasingly unstable as he continued to battle paranoia about being caught

Despite having built a life for herself, Dana revealed that it had not always been easy and recovery was a 'continuous struggle' 

Lee had escaped the situation when he was 18 after moving from Cincinnati to Durham, North Carolina, to attend Duke University.

Dana explained that from then on 'the contact he had with her was one out of every three phone calls was about her borrowing money from him.'

'The roles were flipped,' she elaborated. 'He became the parent and she was the child. 

'That was true when I came along too... I cannot tell you how many times he leant them money for housing and food - just so that we weren't homeless and completely hungry.'

Dana admitted that her parents 'were the kind of folks who got wild airs of ideas,' adding: 'My mother was in her late 30s at the time and my father was adamant that he wanted a daughter but they were having trouble conceiving.

Despite some of the brutal realities of her upbringing, Dana shared that there were some moments of affection

'They quit their jobs on the psych ward and moved to Los Angeles, California, to worship at the feet of TV preacher Dr Robert Schuller. And sure enough I was born in what was called then a geriatric pregnancy because she was 41.'

It was her father, who was six years younger than her mom, who first introduced her to the drug trade at just four years old after the family moved into a trailer. 

'My earliest memories of that trailer are of the skunky smell of marijuana and the dull shine of razor blades scattered across the scratched kitchen counter,' she wrote. 

Her memoir revealed how her father was usually 'too busy to bother with her before she could walk' as she recalled: 'He used duct tape to fasten my hands to my baby bottle filled with chocolate milk.'

But this all changed when she became useful to the business. 

Speaking to DailyMail.com, Dana divulged: 'I got expelled from preschool and I came home to the trailer that day and my father said "well I might as well train you up hustling."'

She was taught how to chop weed and wield a knife during 'explosive' outbursts - as well as being told to slather her arms 'with palmfuls of petroleum jelly' which would help evade an enemies grip, punches or weapons.

'I was not aware that it was unique situation. I just wanted to please my parents. I think that is true for a lot of little kiddos - so many of us at our heart want to do right by our parents and be the children that our parents want us to be,' Dana has since shared.

'I just wanted to be my father's daughter. I would do anything he said and that explosive tendency of the knife fights and the Vaseline notion is something I carried with me my entire life. It would bubble up in different ways.'

Beyond helping her father divide up drugs, Dana, who grew up eating 'ketchup sandwiches until her mouth broke out in ulcers,' also spent time caring for her mother who rarely left the bedroom of the trailer. 

'I wanted to be the emotional support animal that both of my parents needed. My father was manic and my mother was depressed all the time,' she said. 

'I spent my days running the length of that trailer from the kitchen counter cutting up drugs to the back of the trailer where my mother was holed up in bed guarding the drugs.

'I was that little butler running back and forth to anticipate and attend to both of their needs.'

Despite some of the brutal realities of her upbringing, Dana shared that there were some moments of affection.

'My parents' tenderness for each other often came when they were doing drugs at the kitchen counter at night listening to 1980s synthesizer jazz. 

'They would chain smoke joints and recall those inpatient psych ward days in Cincinnati with such fondness and affection about when they met.

'For them, the bond was over those drugs. Because those drugs were the only thing that helped them feel human. That's when I saw their tenderness for each other.'

Dana's father took her along to her first drug drop aged four where she was instructed to act as a look out and carried a knife in case the deal went wrong.

But the exchange went off without a hitch and Dana shared in her memoir how she had been left disappointed not to have been called into action.

Elaborating further on the notion, she told DailyMail.com: 'I think it was this overwhelming urge to be needed and to anticipate and meet the need. 

'I learned that early in my household because my parents were really unable to care for me and so I took on the role of parent caring for them.

'So if my father needed me to be strong and tough and wield my knife but I wasn't able to do it or I wasn't able to be of service to him, my confidence and my self-esteem just went down the toilet because I wasn't useful.

'My mother's favorite thing to say to me growing up was "make yourself useful, young lady" and I heard that at least 10 times a day.

'And so when I wasn't useful I was so sad and restless and angry sometimes too.'

Dana eventually moved out to go to college but admitted: 'I never broke away totally from my parents'

Dana has now been married to her husband for 14 years as she added: 'We don't have children and I think it was because that ship has sailed'

Dana's father's temperament grew increasingly unstable as he continued to battle paranoia about being caught.

He stopped using the front door altogether - and instead 'sawed a manhole in the kitchen floor' - as well as stripping a mattress to 'its coil bones to stave off federal bugs.'

Asked about how it felt to live in such an environment, she said: 'It was terrifying because he had taught me to explode in the face of danger - that was my training when I was four - but when he was having these psychotic breaks I would freeze.

'I just melted away and wanted to disappear. It was so scary.'

Dana explained how the father she had known at aged four compared to the father she saw aged seven was marked with stark contrast. 

'When I was aged four, he was stoic and confident, training me up to fight and stab people and be on the look out and move these drugs. 

Dana's book Between Two Trailers: A Memoir is currently available to buy

'But by age seven, he had cut a hole in the trailer floor and made it a trapdoor and he would hide in the cornfields across the street overnight in a three-piece suit with $10,000 strapped to his chest with duct tape. 

'The father that I had known in how he wanted to train me up in order that I would be protected had no sense of my protection when he was in those psychotic episodes.'

She candidly continued: 'I think the amalgamation of his schizophrenia and drugs use got muddier the older he got because by the time I was born he had done so many decades of hard drugs and he had a drug grand jury indictment - a huge deal in the US - for drug distribution.

'So by then it was hard to know which of the competing factors of the schizophrenia and the brain's damage from hardcore drug use was winning out in those moments. It was probably the perfect storm.'

Dana was still in contact with her grandparents but insisted that they were not aware of the full situation going on behind closed doors.

'They knew that my father was a hardcore drug user and always had been. They knew he was schizophrenic but our family mantra was "you can't fix crazy,"' she said.

'That's what I heard growing up that no one - not a kingpin, not a cop, not a shrink, not a family member - wants crazy on their hands. 

'My grandparents did a really good job of taking care of me but also being careful not to trigger my dad because the truth was always triggering to both of my parents.

'They had to walk a very fine line so that they would have access to me to be able to care for me....'

She dished: 'We also trafficked the drugs under the pretense of a kiddie ride business so no one really knew.

'Everyone thought that my father was the regional manager of Carnival Captivations in charge of decorating and dolling up bland Kmart entrances with these hydraulic ponies that were actually a front for shuffling drugs and money.'

Dana eventually moved out to go to college but admitted: 'I never broke away totally from my parents.

'In college and in graduate school I was always still that midfielder going back and forth trying to appease both of them and be both of their daughters.

'I will say that my mother's daughter probably won out in the end because when we moved to North Carolina she did everything she could to expunge my Indiana record.

'Between her changing my accent - she wiped that clean - she changed my name, expunged this Indiana past - and that made me tethered to her.

'But I was never really untethered from my father because when I would go home and have these wonderful Indiana summers with my grandparents and my two cousins - who are really my best friends and like my sisters - he would fall right back into that grittiness training.

'He would say "I'm going to take you to the pool hall and teach you how to hustle. I'm going to train you up to be a pool shark."

'It was still that push-pull between the two of them my entire life when they were living who wanted two very different daughters.'

Dana graduated from divinity school and went on to complete a post-graduate school residency in chaplaincy at a local hospital where she worked with dying patients.

'I sat at the besides of over 200 patients and helped them transition from life to death in one year. I literally saw 200 people die, which is the greatest gift of my life. 

'You're being invited into this really liminal space with people - this sacred time and so I learned a lot in that year.

'But then after that year I was completely exhausted so I didn't continue chaplaincy.

'I got a desk job as a secretary and hated it because I feel like I'm the kind of person - and this speaks to my trauma - that has to be up and moving around and moving my body in order to be at peace.

'After I quit that desk job, I immediately began teaching and I have been a teacher now for 13 years and it is the perfect balance for me.'

Both of Dana's parents have both now sadly passed away.

She explained: 'My dad passed unexpectedly, suddenly, a month before I got married which was so incredibly sad. 

'I had actually written him a letter six months before I got married at my mother's urging uninviting him to my wedding and that was the last thing I ever said to him. It was so heartbreaking.

'He died presumably of a heart attack but certainly I think the drugs had caught up to him. But I envisioned that he would never die. I thought of him as Peter Pan. 

'I thought that we would get to the wedding and that we would reconcile and we didn't. And that is the biggest regret of my life.'

Speaking of her mother's death, Dana candidly shared: 'On the flip side, my mother had exactly what she wanted, which was a very good and peaceful death with me by her side. 

'I had been trained in end of life care as a chaplain at the divinity school and she knew I had that training and so when she got a terminal diagnosis of diverticulosis with a perforated intestine she opted not to have surgery. 

'She lived two more weeks and then I was there for her very last breath in her hospice bed.'

She added: 'I think death affords us a different kind of relationship with our parents than we can have in life.' 

Despite having built a life for herself, Dana revealed that it has not always been easy and recovery is a 'continuous struggle.'

'All of this healing and recovery and functioning sneaks up on you over time.

'If you can plant the seeds to some healing, it takes a long time for it to actually work.

'For me, every morning I am up at 5am building what I call my "self help scaffolding" just so I can feel human at 6am.

'It still takes me so much self care and psychological work in the morning for me to feel human and adequate and feel like I can move around the world and function.'

She said that her routine includes deep breathing, meditation and journaling.

'Deep breathing is the best and free tool that all of us can use in working through our trauma. Meditation can be kind of scary to people but taking a deep breath? We can all do that,' she said.

'I have also journaled every day of my life since sixth grade. That's like 32 years.'

Elsewhere, Dana added: 'I'm a religious person so I also read some religious and spirituality books. I also like listening to YouTube inspirational videos - the cheesiest ones.'

Discussing further how her childhood's long-term impact on her life, she explained: 'My father taught me to walk through the world with closed fists - ready to fight. My mother taught me to walk through the world with open palms - ready to beg for everything. 

'I have had to learn to walk through the world with my prayer palms - just being peaceful with the past and my experiences.

'The gift of their mental illnesses is that they taught me to be comfortable in chaos and crisis.

'My parents also taught me empathy for what they called "beat down dogs" - they always sided with anyone who the world has subjugated and rejected and oppressed.

'So I often walk through the world with those prayer palms looking to be a helper for who is being oppressed and subjugated. And that turns up in my work as a teacher as an encourager.'

Dana reflected: 'Our first childhood experiences do not leave us. Anything that happens from aged zero to 17 in the categories of abuse, neglect and violence stays with us in our bodies and brains.

'And so I have to be super attuned to my food addiction, which is something I struggle with, my love addiction, my body focus, repetitive behaviors like hair pulling.

'It is the balance of walking through the world with empathy and prayer palms and also knowing each morning I have to practice this self care and do the hard work of trauma recovery every day.'

Dana has now been married to her husband for 14 years and added: 'We don't have children and I think it was because that ship has sailed.

'I think for me I wasn't confident I would be a good parent of my own biological children or adopted children because I hadn't yet sorted through my stuff.

'I felt so strongly that I didn't want to pass on my maladaptive coping and patterns to biological or adopted children until I got healthier.

'And by the time I got healthier I thought, "you know what I'm very at peace with my nieces and nephews and all the students that I teach, I don't need to be a parent."

'So that is just the way it worked out for us.'

Dana's book Between Two Trailers: A Memoir is currently available to buy.