As the daughter of Dog the Bounty Hunter, Lyssa Chapman was prominently featured on the A&E. During the series run, she provided a good number of dramatic plot lines. From her teenage pregnancy to her 2011 arrest, Chapman was viewed by many as a wild child.
Now, she is opening up about her childhood and tumultuous teenage years in her own book.
In her autobiography, Walking on Eggshells: The Lyssa Chapman Story, the 25-year-old recounts her childhood that was marred by physical and mental abuse. She also owns up to her mistakes and describes how she ultimately found faith.
“She also found her way out of the spiral of bad decisions and even worse luck to build a healthy relationship with her mother and father and forge a rewarding, positive life with God,” explains the Amazon synopsis.
Before getting to a point of peace, Lyssa’s described her personal life as a mix of highs and lows.
“Racial hate crimes and abuse were the norm one day, while joy and laughter filled the next,” Lyssa said in Walking on Eggshells.
Lyssa’s life got off to a rocky start when her parents divorced shortly after she was born.
“When most little girls play house, they might imagine two happy parents with several well-behaved children, pretty rooms, flowers in the yard, and a white picket fence near the sidewalk. Me? I just wanted parents who could stand to be in the same room with each other.”
After her parents split up, “Baby Lyssa” lived with her father until she was 10. During that period, Lyssa describes being raised primarily by her sister Barbara, who was five years older. Even though the family lived in a drug-infested neighborhood of Denver, Lyssa said her father’s reputation always kept the children out of harms way.
With her father, dynamics were always unusual. He was extremely involved with his career and most free time was devoted to women — of which there was a steady stream. Still, Lyssa considered herself a daddy’s girl and always believed he loved her.
When she was six, Lyssa’s father announced the family was moving to Hawaii. To Lyssa, her new home was a strange paradise. Although the large family lived in a studio apartment in a Hololulu high-rise, she said her father found ways to make them all feel special. In one case, he rented a luxury car, drove the family down the main road and gave them candy to throw out as if they were in a parade.
However, times weren’t always good — particularly as her father got into hard drugs. His preoccupation left Lyssa in the care of her older siblings, which often resulted in them leaving her with a TV/VCR and a pile of p0rn videos.
“Today I have gained enough perspective to understand that the dysfunction in which I grew up made it much harder for me to understand normal. I have just now begun to recognize and understand healthy relationships, but for me, I had to understand unhealthy first.”
As her father spiraled into drug addiction, Lyssa went to live with her mother in Alaska. Although the move got her away from her father’s issues, Lyssa was just coming into her own. By the time she was 13, Lyssa was experimenting with cocaine and meth.
The most defining moment of her teenage years came when Lyssa got pregnant at the age of 14. After having her daughter, Abbie, when she was 15, Lyssa struggled to get her life together. At 17, while living in a car with her young daughter, Lyssa decided to repair her relationship with her father and join the family business of bounty hunting.
Within the year, Lyssa was the youngest licensed bounty hunter in Hawaii and was on her way to a better life. Still, there were bumps in the road — particularly when she was arrested for criminal property damage and assaulting an officer in 2011.
To see how she finally got back on her feet and found religion, pick up her book, Walking on Eggshells.
