When She Comes Back: A Memoir

by Ronit Plank

Ronit was six years old when her mother left her and her four-year-old sister for India to follow a guru. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, whose commune was responsible for the largest biological attack on U.S. soil, preached that children were hindrances and encouraged sterilizations among his followers. Luckily Ronit's father, who'd left the family the previous year, stepped up and brought the girls to live with him first in Newark, New Jersey, and later in Flushing, Queens. On the surface, his nurturing was the balm Ronit sought, but she soon paid a second emotional price, taking on the role of partner and confidant to him, and substitute mother to her sister. By the end of her childhood, Ronit would discover she had lost her mother and the close and trusting relationship she once had with her father. Though they have now reconciled, for years she grappled with the toll her mother's leaving took, measuring her self-worth and capacity for love by that absence.

When She Comes Back is the story of a family trying to find itself, grownups who don't know how to be adults, and what happens when the person your life revolves around can't stay. It's also a story of resilience and reconciliation, how rejection by the most important person in Ronit's life ultimately led to an unflagging commitment to, and love for her own children.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Cults, True Crime, Audiobook, Biography Memoir

Paperback

First published May 5, 2021

About the author

Ronit Plank is author of WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation and HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE, a collection of short fiction which won Hidden River Arts' 2020 Eludia Award.

A Seattle-based writer, teacher, and editor, her work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Writer’s Digest, The Rumpus, American Literary Review, Hippocampus, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere.

She is nonfiction editor at The Citron Review and her stories and essays have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, the Best of the Net, and the Best Microfiction Anthology. Her short fiction has won prizes and/or special mention in The Iowa Review, American Literary Review, Narrative Magazine, Third Coast Magazine, and Hunger Mountain.

Her weekly podcast LET'S TALK MEMOIR features interviews with memoirists and writing teachers about craft, the creative process, and the writing life and is available on Apple and Spotify.

Links to her writing, upcoming workshops, other projects at www.ronitplank.com

Reviews

[Keema Waterfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

“When She Comes Back” is a riveting coming-of-age memoir about a family that doesn’t quite know how to belong to itself.

I was entirely drawn in by young Ronit as she struggled to make sense of the adults in her world. Ronit’s mother, a seeker who feels lost in motherhood and chooses to settle into the embrace of a charismatic cult leader rather than with her children; and Ronit’s father, who’s love for his children is not enough to protect and nurture them in some of the most important ways young girls need. Throughout, Plank interrogates her childhood with a clear-eyed compassion, allowing her parents to show themselves on the page without judgement. They are flawed humans with mystifying foibles, against which background our young narrator is forced to eek out a sense of self. Who is she as a motherless girl? How can she be her father’s confidante and her sister’s role model, and still be a person with her own needs and wants? I ached for Ronit’s loneliness, for her confusion and her trembling heart. And I celebrated with her, too, when her innate resilience led her to a successful partnership, an all-new experience in motherhood, and ultimately, the kind of reconciliation many only dream of.

[Becky Aud-Jennison · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could not put this book down.

Having recently binged on the docu-series, Wild, Wild Country, which expands on the guru who the author's mother followed, I was left wondering about where all the children were. Had they been left? They certainly weren't seen. When I made the connection between the series and this book I was anxious to get some answers– at least about one family's experience.

What I found was a fascinating account that pulled me into this wee child's journey. Being a therapist, I'm always morbidly curious about what makes people tick– especially in challenging times. The author's ability to describe the moments throughout her childhood while also giving insight into how she was processing what was happening, intermingled with her adult hindsight, had me gripped. Her ability to dance between the adoration and abandonment, the desperation, denial, and delight as she unpacked this history provided a beautifully thorough exposé. And the truth and turmoil underlying her parent's lives and choices illustrates the layers of imperfection that make us all, as well as the redeeming power of love. There were tears as this book ended. In part, for the wee lonely, longing little girl, but more for the author who has found everything she was always looking for. Thanks Ronit Plank for letting us come along on your journey.

[Ashleigh Renard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Our experiences in childhood have the potential to mold us forever. In this remarkable debut, Ronit Plank shapes the reader’s understanding of abandonment, growing up too fast, and ultimately, how working through these challenges laid the foundation for love in her own family.

[Meg Butterworth · Rating 5 out of 5]

It takes courage to open yourself up and share your heartaches and disappointments. It takes more courage to work through them and come to a place of relative acceptance and understanding. That's the journey Ronit takes her readers on in her memoir. Ronit shows us the challenges of being a parent, of being a child and of being human. Regardless of your own childhood experience, family dynamics or current stage in life, there's so much to relate to in her story and so much to learn from.

[Missy Ponder-Reston · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ms. Plank has bravely mosaicked her incredible story of childhood and her loss. Her memoir is vivid, complex and captivating taking us through her mothers choices. From her joining a cult, leaving her daughters and the consequences that shape the author, her sister, and her father. I found myself emotional and living through her story understanding how generations behave and a mothers love shapes our consciences and culture. I couldn't stop reading her sea of waves flowing, beating her down and riding each chapter to her personal shore. Thank you for sharing this intimate truth.

[Jodie | GeauxGetLit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hands down one of the best memoirs I have ever read! I was completely intoxicated with Ronit’s story and couldn’t put the book down. Ronit’s mother basically abandoned her kids leaving them with their father. Ronit being the oldest took on the role of being the woman in the house before the tender age of ten! She showed strength and determination and when she became a teenager she began to realize that was a fuzzy line that she shouldn’t be the woman of the house.

Once she became a mother, it was then that she finally saw how her past with love and abandonment had shaped her life. A very courageous and resilient mother she became, not everyone is so fortunate to have that ahha moment and are determined to not repeat those same mistakes that was the foundation of her childhood.

Brilliant debut and I highly recommend!

[Lisa Garpestad · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was captivating from start to finish and I had to force myself to put it down, yet still finished it in less than 24 hours.
The author told the story in such a way that I felt like I was sharing her heartbreaks, joys, questions about her family. I grew up in a family so vastly different from this one, our experiences completely different, yet I still felt so connected.
A notable part of this book for me was how it spoke to how words spoken to a child, even casual and jokingly, can change the very person that they become.
This is a very compelling story about our relationship with our parents, our place in our families (and the world), forgivenesses, and searching for peace.

[Rajiv · Rating 4 out of 5]

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I recently saw the “Wild Wild Country” documentary on Netflix about the Rajneesh movement’s controversy in the 70s/80s. Reading “When She Comes Back” is a beautiful memoir that mentions how a family’s life changes when the mother gets involved in the movement.

To begin with, I enjoyed the way the author narrated her childhood. She writes the memoir in a simple yet effective manner, where you immediately feel like you are part of the family. Moreover, I loved the family photos she put in to add a personal touch to the book. The highlight of the tale is Ronit’s relationship with her mother. The author beautifully toggles between the present and the past, as Ronit tries to find out why her mother left them and if they were to blame. On a side note, I also loved the Jewish references, and I felt like I learned more about their culture, like “Sabra” and “Kibbutz.”

Moreover, my heart went out to the author while reading the book. The author goes through so many changes, especially with the relationship of her parents. On the one hand, her mother disappears to India to follow the movement, and on the other hand, her father is busy with his new family. In many ways, I applaud the author for growing up and leading an ordinary life, even though she had a rocky upbringing. However, some of the passages haunted me, especially the Halloween incident and when she finds her father’s magazines.

Overall, “When She Comes Back” is an emotional memoir of the author who talks about how situations from her childhood impacted the choices in her life. I recommend this to anyone who loves memoirs and would like to know more about families affected by the Rajneesh movement during the time.

[David Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author's journey from abandonment to reconciliation.
She was born in a kibbutz in Israel to parents who were reticent to get married while searching for community. When she was four her parents moved to Seattle to what was the beginning of the end to their relationship. Her parents split and her father moves across the country to New Jersey leaving her and her younger sister with a mother who's uncomfortable with her role as a mother and still searching. When she was six her mother decides to leave the girls with their father while she moves to India to follow the cult leader Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. What was supposed to be just a few months turned into a much longer separation leaving the author to assume responsibility of her sister while trying to find her place with her father. Always present is the absence of her mother, even when she does come back it's never for long leaving the author to search for meaning and her own place in the world.
Wonderfully told, expressing the vulnerabilities and fears of a child missing her mother. The joys of the fleeting moments her mom was around and her apprehensions of living with her father.
Although painful at times, I appreciated the author's journey from her childhood through adulthood and her resiliency and determination to come to terms with her history. I've read a few memoirs where the father is the one to abandon their family but this was the first where the mother leaves. I experienced all the emotions, heartache, confusion and fears through the detailed retelling of her story.
Congratulations to the author for coming out the other side as a whole person who's able to enjoy life, her family and yes, even her parents.
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Thank you to the author, Motina Books and Suzy Approved Book Tours for the gifted copy and including me on this tour.

[Carrie Honaker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh to have a half star- this is a 4.5, not a 4! The premise of this memoir catches you right off- children abandoned by a mother who joins a cult and how the mother-daughter relationship transforms when the mother comes back. I am always fascinated by the allure of cults, and Ronit Plank's book revealed some of that through her thorough research and brave examination of her family's life. Even though she had every right to be judgmental, there is not a feeling of judgement, more an exploration of what must have been missing for her mother to drive the decision to leave. There is definitely the loneliness felt by the author and the need for approval that stemmed from her mother's departure, but I always felt the love she held in her heart.

I appreciated Plank's honesty about her feelings of unworthiness, struggle with body image, and self-acceptance. She conveys it all in a way that is relatable for anybody, not just someone in her situation. Her quirky persistence jumps off the page as she navigates living with her father, poverty, stepmothers, and her own relationships. I applaud her dedication to having her parents in her life, despite the past. I'm not sure I would have the courage. If you loved The Glass Castle, pick When She Comes Back up- it is a quick, engaging read.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a touching memoir. It many ways, it was very relatable having grown up in the same era as the author, with parents whom divorced at a young age also. However, that is where the similarities end. The author’s childhood, full of emotions driven by the feeling of abandonment and the influence of a cult feel very real and raw. This book not only highlights the impact on her childhood, but also strives to understand what pulled her Mom into the cult. It highlights the importance of receiving Iove and encouragement in childhood, and the effects of not having the support needed. This is a memoir that is educational and thought provoking….and a walk down memory lane of what it was like being raised in the 70’s and 80’s.

[Randi (randi_reads) · Rating 5 out of 5]

When She Comes Back is a beautifully written memoir that I finished in two sittings. Ronit's mother leaves her young children with their father to join a cult. This memoir explores the issue of abandonment with why her mother would leave them and choose not to return. It is a very detailed account of her childhood and making her way through it with their father. I liked how the author used her experiences in her childhood later in life as an adult. I also liked how, as an adult, she was able to have some sort of relationship with her mother and father.

Thank you to Suzy Approved Book Tours and the author for a gifted copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

[Parris Bonds · Rating 5 out of 5]

Last night, I finished reading When She Comes Back with my heart in my throat and tears in my eyes. Ms. Plank elucidates how the spirit of even a mere child can triumph over the obstacles life (and adults) place in our paths. It touched a nerve within me that I could so readily identify. Superbly written, When She Comes Back truly is one of those rare "Gorilla-glued" books one cannot put down.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

How is a child's and young woman's life shaped by a deep and singular longing? What is a mother's duty to her children? What happens when a young mother tries to follow her bliss and seek her own sense of fulfillment? How does a single father raise two young daughters by himself in a city while also trying to date and have a career in a time where single dad's are virtually unheard of? This is a memoir that will break your heart, make you laugh and cringe as you remember your own childhood, ask questions about your own sense of duty to family and self, and make you fall in love with the plucky, honest, funny, sweet, awkward young Ronit.

In When She Comes Back : A Memoir, Plank details the loss of her mother to guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh when she moves to ashrams in India and Oregon. Full of incredible characters and far-flung locales -- a kibbutz in the "armpit of Israel;" the young grimy city of Seattle, before it was cool to be grungy, in the 70's; Brooklyn and New Jersey in the 80's; ashrams; and then later, home again to Seattle -- the memoir is full of juicy details of the time periods of Plank's childhood and young adulthood that shimmer off the page.

I could not put this book down. I had to keep turning pages to see if this bright spirit would get what she so desperately wanted or if not, then what she needed.

Read it and weep, read it and laugh, read it and cheer on this little girl and perhaps, your own young self. Read it and remember your own hometown, your roller rink, the music of your childhood, your pizza parlors, your movie theater, your swimming pool, your first day of school, your school-age crushes, your summer sleep-away camps with awful sandwiches and watered-down drinks, the first time you held someone's hand, and awkward family parties with casually cruel relatives.

This book will transport you, delight you and challenge your assumptions about the passionate desires of children and motherhood. I am grateful to have read it.

[Barbara Runyon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read it in one session. The importance of rituals, the tenderness of a childs development, impressions of family, place, friends, community, sexuality and self were exquisitely described. The difficultly of a woman's development without a mothers presence and constancy were first and foremost, even with the presence of a father. Everything that happened contributed to this authors work, family and community. The fact that this family still celebrates together is a testament to love.

[Leslie Curran · Rating 5 out of 5]

When She Comes Back touched my heart. I listened to the audio version, and hearing Ronit reading her own memories made me hang on every word. Her writing is brilliant; clever descriptions that transform you to points in time and the emotions she felt trying to make sense of the often uncertain world around her. Her memoir evokes so many feelings, you can't stop reading/listening. Looking forward to more from Ronit Plank. Thank you for sharing your story!

[Lisa Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ronit Plank's memoir is filled with aching specificity about the loneliness of a childhood where she was repeatedly abandoned by her mother, who was in search of her own fulfillment (including by joining a cult in India), and her own journey toward understanding. Beautifully written.

[Rachel A · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oof. I just finished reading this book and wanted to review it while the tears were still rolling down my cheek, emotions running high. I've never read a book that speaks of childhood with such honesty and introspection. The details in the stories Ronit recounts for the reader create a sense of place and a mood - when she feels scared, I read a little faster to find out what is going to happen. Little Ronit, what a character -- mucking it up for the guy at the gas station, stopping to eat snacks at each house in the kibbutz... I love her! I appreciate that Ronit doesn't gloss over her own imperfections and it is refreshing to read her honesty and vulnerability.

Ronit writes about her thoughts and feelings so matter-of-factly, which is such a fascinating juxtaposition to the uncertainty and insecurity she was feeling at the time. As the reader, her directness makes me feel safe knowing the little girl in the stories is going to be okay. She writes from a place of knowing and wisdom. Her perspective is new to me and I appreciate it. I love her self-deprecating humor about her child self. The portraits she paints of her mom and dad are 3-dimensional - both flawed and her whole world.

I want to call the people in this book characters, because they are so interesting and "well developed", but I know they are real and that makes it even more compelling.

[Danielle Brand · Rating 5 out of 5]

In When She Comes Back, author Ronit Plank crafts vivid scenes and brings us along for the wild ride of her growing-up years. She drops us right into the middle of family life punctuated by familiar food and pop culture memories of the 1970s and ‘80s — while at the same time drawing the reader wholeheartedly into the central narrative around parental absence. There’s an unflinching honesty to the author’s portrayal of her often-difficult home life and relationships, yet she manages to shine the light of inquiry on herself with equal intensity. Beyond the heartrending story of a little girl and her sister left to grow up mainly without their mother, what struck me is the author’s depiction of the inner life of a girl whose passion for food, desire to fit in, and confusion around adolescence are all entirely relatable. Reading When She Comes Back made me want to hug the author along with a younger version of myself, and my own daughter, all at once. It’s a story with an imperfectly redemptive ending — a humanizing and compassionate portrait of a family, warts and all. On top of all that, the audio version, narrated by the author with superb diction and voice, is a treat.

[Estelle Erasmus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ronit Plank tells the searing story of her mother leaving her young children and husband to follow a cult leader. Although Ronit avoided the abuses that children in the cult underwent —depicted in a recent TV documentary — she suffered by losing her mother and being left behind. In this memoir she investigates the emotional impact of her mom’s decision. Rather than be a vengeful narrative, she show great empathy for her mother and there is also a lovely redemption arc that adds a deeper layer of meaning to her story. As host of the wildly popular podcast Let’s Talk Memoir, Ronit knows how to cover a fraught topic and delivers her story with craft and courage.

[Mark W. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having recently become acquainted with Ronit I was looking forward to reading her memior and hearing more of her story. I was not disappointed, her story was captivating from beginning to end. A journey of sadness and searching for answers from childhood into adulthood and ultimately finding her path forward. A great story of triumph over what life often throws at us and how we can come out stronger and wiser if we try.

[Carrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

“That’s one of the most damaging legacies of leaving children: the doubt they carry that they’re good enough to stick around for. I know I’ve struggled with that my whole life.”

“In order to survive I needed to believe I had the power to change her mind, that I could find a way to make her stay. I didn’t realize for a long time, not until I had children myself, that it wasn’t up to me to keep her with me. I couldn’t have faced that truth when I was young because then, besides not having her with me, I no longer would have had hope that I could ever get her back.”

Today I was able to read Ronit’s memoir that described how her life was affected by her mom coming in and out of her life. I found these above statements ones that reflect her book so well. Many have had fathers walk away from their families, but to have your Mother be the one to walk away is so hard to understand.

Ronit’s mother had an abusive upbringing, which left a significant impact on her ability to be a mother. In her search for belonging, she left on 2 different occasions which were meant to be temporary, to follow cult leader Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Once to India and lastly to the Oregon commune until its split after the leader attempted to flee the country. When in the USA, most of her upbringing was left in the hands of her father, although he was the one to initially start the breakdown of their family when he had an affair.

As a mother, I could especially understand the anger Ronit felt about her mother after she too had children of her own. The pain Ronit felt was very palpable in her writing and made me want to immediately go outside to play with and love on my own children.

I enjoyed Ronit’s story of her upbringing and think you would, too! I am honored to be an early reader. Thanks to @ronitplank and @suzyapprovedbooktours for my copy of the book!

[Elizabeth Heise · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the last few heart-wrenching pages of this magnificent book, I shushed the guy playing loud party videos lounging next to us on the beach. I wanted to soak up every satisfying, unimaginable word uninterrupted and didn’t mind risking a fight with a stranger to get it.

Ronit Plank’s story gives voice to the specific kind of despair of a girl growing up without the steady presence of a mother. I too had this experience. Although our mothers escaped to wildly different destinations (hers joined an actual cult, mine went back to live with her own mother, irony of ironies) I recognized myself as a kid navigating hairstyles and the fit of clothes with no mom. Losing a pet and worrying if you are terrible at love because you aren’t getting enough of it yourself. I have never read anything that came so close to mirroring my own emotional state at that time.


“Something was missing: that part of me that had earned her unconditional love and her approval. I was too much...(t)oo loud, too insistent. I didn’t have that magical ingredient most kids had that forms the glue of their relationship with their mother. Kids may not realize they have that power over their parents, but they can feel it when it’s absent. They scramble, they perform, or maybe they step away and stop trying. Not me. I tried for years and years. I was afraid of her absence. What it could do to me..”

The icing on the cake is Ronit’s skillful jumps in time to being a mother now, looking back at herself as a child with the maternal instincts she now has. I understand myself better for having read it. Thank you Ronit.

Highly recommend—and I’m sending a copy to my mother & sibs in hopes that it will be the catalyst for healing we have all needed for decades.

[Fletcher · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve been looking forward to reading Ronit Plank’s When She Comes Back, a memoir in which the narrator’s bodacious honesty is annealed with deep introspection.
The theme of this unique story is both universal and particular: To whom do we belong, and how do we shape our belonging over time? It is also a story of forgiveness and redemption. From the outset, we learn that when the narrator and her little sister are still quite young, their mother will fall under the spell of a dangerous cult that will take her away from them.
But for the first few years of their lives, the young family lives in a kibbutz in Israel’s Negev desert surrounded by warmth, sunshine, and the security of belonging to people who support both the nuclear family and community life. This is where I became afraid for this little girl. Because from the introduction I knew what she stands to lose and don’t want her to get hurt. Her parents decide to leave Israel and land in a drafty house in rainy Seattle. Her parents, suddenly separated from their beloved community, eventually separate from each other. Her mother becomes a stranger to everyone, even herself and is drawn into the cult founded by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. The narrator recounts her own desperate and heart-breaking efforts as a little girl to get the love and attention she needs, even pretending to be deaf—and pulling it off! Throughout the narrator’s childhood, her mother is periodically and unpredictably absent. We learn the kind of devastation a cult can have across generations.
With wisdom, equanimity, and a steady hand, the narrator guides us along her uneven path to adulthood. Emerging out from under the long shadow of her mother’s absences and her father’s blurred boundaries, the narrator manages the impossible. She builds for herself and her own family what she as a child could have used more of: a House of Belonging—a place of security where her husband, kids, and even her flawed parents have a place at her dining room table every Friday to share a meal. To find out how she survives to pull this off, you will simply have to read the book.

[Sandra Eliason · Rating 5 out of 5]

When She Comes Back by Ronit Plank asks how a daughter survives being abandoned by her mother, not once, but twice. How does she navigate the longing, the hope for a stable relationship? How does she behave to keep her mother from leaving again?
Anyone who has had to navigate abandonment, who wonders about healing afterward or how a relationship will evolve with the abandoner should read this book
Ronit’s life begins on a kibbutz in Israel, where her parents moved from New York as newlyweds. When the family moves to Seattle before Ronit is five and her father leaves them, her mother falls apart under the strain of poverty and unsupported single motherhood in unfamiliar surroundings--on a different continent. Her mother’s own need for healing from an abusive mother drives her to join an ashram in India, following guru Rajneeshpuram. Ronit’s mother takes the kids to New York where she leaves them, ages 6 and 3, with their father. She is escaping to the ashram for the summer, she says. But she stays until Ronit’s grandmother is diagnosed with cancer and Ronit’s mother returns from India to care for her own mother. The girls hope for permanent reunion, but after months of weekend visits, her mother disappears again, and Ronit’s father remains the girls’ main caretaker. How Ronit navigates her teenage years, separating from the wife-like role she had created with her father, and exploring the longing for her mother are some themes in this vulnerable and haunting book.
Ronit and her mother eventually establish a relationship as adults, after Ronit marries and has children of her own. The understanding it takes to view her mother’s life from an adult perspective, as well as the letting go of anger and grief, are the underpinning of the acceptance needed to create this ongoing relationship.
I highly recommend this book.

[Betty Reed · Rating 5 out of 5]

In “When She Comes Back” Ronit Plank writes about the longing for a mother who leaves and returns, only to leave again, with the candor of an adult and the heartbreak of a child. Her angst and actions to shield her younger sister establish the emotional thread throughout this memoir. weaving a tapestry of scenes that toughen this little girl so she can deflect others’ questions and pretend she doesn’t care that her mother is gone. Despite her father’s loving and well-meaning care, we feel the suffering of so much emptiness. The many roles she is thrown into—protector of her sister, cook for the family, and pleasant companion for her father are roles usually played by the parent. This reversal is not lost on her, even as a child. Plank writes with care and honesty, fleshing out her parents’ characters with the good and the bad sides. She shows how some missteps in her parents’ relationships with other partners reflect some of the missteps in their own upbringings, leading the reader to wonder what might happen in the next generation. But when the author has her own family, she assures us that the pattern of abandonment and/or neglect has ended with her own childhood. She embraces understanding, curiosity and compassion instead of the poison of bitterness by pursuing the connection to her mother as an adult. Not everyone in a similar situation might be able to do that but the fact that Plank has an amiable and close relationship with both her father and her mother can be a lesson for all of us in learning to accept what we can, and to discard what we can’t.

[Michelle Warren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Smart. Witty. Engaging.

In the memoir “When She Comes Back” author Ronit Plank transports the reader into the 1970s-1980s as she navigates emigrating from Israel to the U.S. As a young child, Plank went from a supportive, communal, cohesive and socially nurturing environment on the kibbutz, to a new and unfamiliar country shrouded in a wet, isolated, and cold reality: Seattle, WA. After some time, Plank’s father decides to end the marriage to her mother, separates from the family, and relocates to the East Coast, leaving Plank, her younger sister, and mother on their own. Plank’s mother, now vulnerable and alone with two young children, was pulled toward the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh community active in her neighborhood (Capitol Hill). Eventually, Plank would lose her mother to the cult. Without her mother, Plank and her sister would reunite with her father on the East Coast, where she would spend many years during her youth, being confronted with all the pain and awkwardness that adolescence brings and continuing on a path of self-discovery and maturity in her mother’s absence.

As the reader is exposed to Plank’s journey, her experience is underscored by resilience, introspection, and personal growth. The work ends with a poignant discussion that leads the reader full circle and, above all, gives us hope.

Plank’s captivating work is one that is difficult to put down and is highly recommended.

[stephanie vuckovic · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author’s debut memoir is a moving, beautifully written account of a daughter who longs for the mother who abandoned her and her sister to live in a cult. Ms. Plank describes in heartbreaking detail how she felt that she “wasn’t enough” to capture her mother’s attention and how she constantly yearned for her mother’s presence and searched for a sense of belonging. “What did I have to do to make her want to be with me as much as I wanted to be with her?” she wonders. Readers of all generations who had mothers who were out of reach for various reasons can relate to that feeling of loss, abandonment and being “less than.” Even though Ms. Plank’s father lovingly provided for them as best he could, there were natural conflicts as she approached adolescence, which she articulates with a candor that so poignantly reflects her discomfort at the time. The sprinkling of cultural references from those who grew up in the 70s and 80s make this especially relatable to Generation Xers. The fact that she is able to forgive her mother and invite her back into her life shows how large this daughter’s heart grew, even in the face of this rejection. I would love to read an account of how Ms. Plank arrived at this forgiveness. In sum, this is a candid, moving account of a daughter who was rejected by her mother and managed to go on, forgive and form a loving family of her own. Absolutely lovely!

[Cassie’s Reviews · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is an extremely powerful memoir that sticks with you long after the last page.
Your transported back to the 1970-1980, when the author Ronit Plank emigrates from Israel to the U.S as a young child. This was a huge change Israel held a nurturing environment the only place she knew, moving to cold Seattle Washington was a change she wasn’t ready for. When her father abruptly decides to divorce her mother and then moves to the east coast she’s shocked, he doesn’t just leave her mother he leaves behind Ronit and her younger sister. Ronits mother looks for acceptance she’s alone with two kids and feeling vulnerable and she soon finds it in Bhagwan Shree Rajineesh a community {cult} thats active in her neighborhood. Soon Ronit sees she’s losing her mother to this cult her mother follows this cult she joined across the world.Ronit and her sister find themselves moving back with their father and growing up without their mother. Ronit soon sees herself growing up without the affection and love from mother. The author did an amazing job discussing the difficulties of living through monumental moments that she had to go through without her mother, and finding her own inner strength from inside and accepting herself. I truly loved this book, especially seeing things through her eyes as a child and how open she was when discussing such personal moments. Five stars.

[Jaclyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I first picked up this book, I wondered how a mother could leave her children and follow a stranger across the world. But, very early into the story, I got a sense of the situation and the longing her mother felt for more. As a mother myself, I can understand her journey to heal and find herself. Those early days, when kids are young and demanding can be so difficult. But, I can also very much relate to Ronit's struggles as she grew up desperate for the attention and affection of her mother as I grew up longing for my father. Ronit does a beautiful job of taking us through her very vivid accounting of the monumental moments that shaped her view of the world. And how she's learned to overcome her initial thoughts about herself and her body to grow into a successful and happy adult. At times, I laughed at the way kids see the world and reflected back on my own childhood. And how some moments felt so big when, to the adults, they were so small. Thank you Ronit for chronicling the journey of your childhood and sharing it with us.