to the moon and back:
a childhood under the influence
Find Hope and Embrace Your Joy
The best seats Lisa Kohn ever had at Madison Square Garden were at her mother’s mass wedding, and the best cocaine she ever had was from her father’s friend, the judge.
Born to hippie parents and raised in New York City’s East Village in the 1970s, Lisa’s early years were a mixture of encounter groups, primal screams, macrobiotic diets, communes, Indian ashrams, Jefferson Airplane concerts in Central Park, and watching naked actors on off-Broadway stages during the musical HAIR. By the time her older brother was ten, Lisa’s father had him smoking pot. By the time Lisa was ten, Lisa’s mother had them pledging their lives to the Unification Church (the “Moonies”) and self-appointed Messiah, Reverend Sun Myung Moon.
As a child, Lisa knew the ecstatic comfort of inclusion in a cult and as a teenager the torment of rebelling against it. As an adult, Lisa struggled to break free from the hold of abuse and the scars in her heart, mind, and psyche–battling her own addictions and inner demons and searching her soul for a sense of self-worth. Told in spirited candor, to the moon and back reveals how one can leave behind absurdity and horror and create a life of intention and joy. This is the fascinating tale of a story rarely told in its full complexity.
Get a Signed Copy Personalized Just For You
If you’d like a signed copy, Lisa has made arrangements with her local bookstore–Main Point Books–to sign any book that is processed through the store (in person or online), so take advantage of this chance to personalize your copy today.
new awards
Silver Medal Award
2019 Shortlist
2018 INDIES Book of the Year
13th Annual Finalist
Honorable Mention
2019 Finalist
Other Places to Buy the Book
Share Hope With Your Book Club or Reading Group
Reader’s Guide
Use this companion piece with your book group for a deeper dive into Lisa’s world.
Discuss with Lisa
Lisa will do her VERY BEST to attend (virtually or in person, as location and time permit) any book club or discussion group that reads the book and invites her! If you’d like to discuss a date, please contact Lisa.
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Praise for to the moon and back
You really need to read this book, because it’s awesome.
But this is not just an inside-the-cult book; this is the story of a woman who attempted everything in her power to get out of it. “I learned on my journey through self-help programs that I had experienced covert abuse,” writes the author. “Too much had happened to me and around me, and much of it had been off-kilter.”
If writing is an evacuation tool to process and understand abuse, Kohn has done an excellent job of producing a text that oozes with honesty and truth.
Kohn’s journey is as riveting as it is shocking. To the Moon and Back is an unflinchingly candid and revelatory book.
Lisa Kohn shows us in her powerful memoir that it is possible to find peace and contentment despite having a rocky, unstable and often confusing childhood.
Lisa’s story is riveting, redeeming and oh so inspiring. I couldn’t put it down.
Lisa Kohn offers a personal perspective about life and love within the Unification Church. It’s a heartfelt examination of what it’s like to be kid growing up in a ‘cult.’ And about difficulties with family, friends, and adolescence that are often complicated and exacerbated by groups called cults due to their dramas and dynamics. Often when former members from such groups write about their personal journey and recovery it can potentially enlighten everyone who reads it. Accounts like Lisa Kohn’s are a necessary ingredient for our collective education because they give us an inside view that only an ex-member can provide.
Lisa Kohn writes with an honesty that will grip you immediately and take you on her harrowing, expansive, journey. You won’t be able to help yourself. You’ll be compelled to read her fascinating story—which will entertain, discomfort, and broaden you—and you’ll be better for it. She is a fierce, true spirit, who finds her way past anything childhood threw at her—including fanatical cults, confusing love, and life in the dangerous East Village—and makes us see that healing and finding your own ground is always possible.
One person’s crazy cult is another one’s sanctuary. When you are a child from a broken home and that person is your mother (so deep into being a Moonie that you are best friends with the leader’s kids), and your father is a party-hearty hippie bartender, a lifetime of confusion, and more, is sure to follow. Kohn’s long and twisted journey to make sense of it all will have you quickly thinking ‘There but for the grace of God go I’ and marveling at the resilience of the human spirit.
to the moon and back is a wild and honest ride that makes sense of complex and sometimes painful experiences with heart, grit, and courage. Lisa’s energy, infectious positivity, and transparency about her own life journey and all its twists and turns will inspire any woman who’s looking for the light at the end of the tunnel.
Wow. What a read. I truly had trouble putting it down.
What a read. An inside look at the moonies the cult we heard about ages ago and thought was too far out to be real. Well, I guess it’s real and far out but not in a good way. This was so well written it was hard to put down and hard to believe.
