The tenuous benefits of both helped balance the destruction of the other. Ironically, the opposing - but equally unstable - elements of her home and church helped her survive early life. “My religion is now love - love for myself, for you, and for the universe,” she said. The religious practices she adheres to now focus on facing her mental scars, letting go of the perfectionism that gripped her, and accepting who she is and the life that hurt her. Ultimately, Kohn survived by letting go of the cult religion of her past and embracing love instead of bitterness. We need a huge dose of self-love and self-compassion.” “As a survivor, I’ve learned that as a race, we’re too hard on ourselves. “It’s for anybody who feels hopeless or damaged beyond repair.

The book is a message of hope and love, she said.

Why would Kohn, after a childhood of abuse and pain, throw those experiences out for the world to ogle and judge? The answer is simple: She knows there are people out there who need to hear her story of survival. She has, she said in a phone interview, “worked really hard on my recovery for decades.” Today, Kohn is a wife, mother, business owner, leadership consultant, executive coach, speaker, and, now, best-selling author of “to the moon and back,” in which, she said, “I bare myself on a sometimes naked level to my friends, my neighbors, and my readers.” After years of destructive influence, Kohn left the church, but not before spiraling into struggles with anorexia, cocaine addiction and abusive relationships. Pulled by a love for her mother and the enticement of the church’s gregarious conversion methods, Kohn embraced the church and its teachings, even as it stripped her of her mother and fed a deep-seated belief in her own inability to be good. Her mother moved into the church, forcing Kohn and her brother to move in with their drug-addicted father. After her mother joined the Moonies when Kohn was just a girl, the church encouraged her mother to abandon her children and commit to the dominance of the church. Growing up, her reality was defined by the inconsistencies between affection and abuse purpose and control connection and rejection religion and extremism - the list goes on and on. The contrasts in Kohn’s life were exhaustive.

Kohn shares her story of growing up a Moonie in her autobiography, “to the moon and back.” Lisa Kohn grew up in the 1970s within the crazy dichotomy of two very different worlds.ĭuring the week, she lived with her father, surrounded by drugs and sex, in New York City’s East Village at a time when the neighborhood was “seedy and scary.” On the weekends - but only when the church granted permission - Kohn visited her mother, a member of the Unification Church, whose members are better known as the Moonies, that Kohn learned to embrace and then learned to release.

Lisa kohn to the moon and back