“Where are you from?” It’s a simple question for most, but for me, it’s a loaded inquiry that often leads to a simplified, less-than-truthful answer. The full story is complex: my childhood was spent across various compounds in Kansas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Boston, and even Martha’s Vineyard. We moved in convoys of five vehicles, constantly relocating. My memories are a mix of LSD use by adults, government-issued cheese, and a school bus proclaiming “Venus or Bust.” This reality is hard to convey and often sounds like fabrication. So, I usually opt for “Upstate New York” to keep things simple.
Let me elaborate on this unconventional upbringing. I was born in 1968 into what was known as the Lyman Family, a group of about a hundred adults and sixty children. We referred to ourselves collectively as “the communities.” It was a world entirely unto itself. My interactions were limited to those within the Family; my entire universe was populated by people I had always known. Education was at home, and medical care was avoided unless absolutely necessary – reserved for severe incidents like accidental amputations during wood chopping or burns from sorghum harvesting.
Growing up, I was indoctrinated with the belief that we would eventually journey to Venus. Years after leaving this life, in my early twenties, while recounting my childhood, someone suggested, “That doesn’t sound like a commune—it sounds like a cult.” The word “cult” still feels jarring. It comes with heavy connotations, often applied by outsiders to label groups they deem extreme or dangerous. It feels judgmental, reductive, and doesn’t capture the nuances of my experience. It triggers a protective instinct for my past – you weren’t there, you don’t understand.
However, with time and reflection, I’ve had to confront certain undeniable truths. My upbringing was under the sway of Mel Lyman, a charismatic yet complicated leader, who constantly dictated new rules and ways of living. While Lyman never commanded his followers to commit murder like Charles Manson, I believe his influence was so profound that they would have obeyed if asked. In a disturbing event in 1973, three Family members attempted a bank robbery; one died, and two were imprisoned. Furthermore, Mel Lyman authored a book titled “Autobiography of a World Savior.” These facts paint a picture that is difficult to reconcile with the idealized notion of a commune. The term “family cult,” with its emphasis on both the close-knit structure and the potentially manipulative dynamics, starts to feel more apt in describing the Lyman Family.
For those raised in conventional environments, my childhood might seem exotic, scandalous, even captivating. Cults, or family cults like the Lyman Family, hold a certain morbid fascination. Yet, a key element often overlooked is the sheer ordinariness of daily existence within these worlds. Life in a large group, regardless of ideology, involves mundane routines. There were always dishes to be cleaned, mountains of laundry to be dried. The grand plans for our Venusian future unfolded against this backdrop of everyday tasks. As I often say, when sharing my story, “It wasn’t all acid and orgies.” (Acid was indeed used by adults, seen as a tool for spiritual growth. And to my knowledge, orgies were not part of the Family’s practices.) What I often omit is that amidst the strangeness, there were also elements of a happy childhood, or at least, happy moments. Family members, young and old, would sing together almost daily while harvesting crops like strawberries or corn – Woody Guthrie songs, folk tunes like “Down in the Valley.” We foraged for morel mushrooms in the woods, and fishing was a significant activity. Every time an adult caught a fish, I would meticulously paste a scale into my diary. We were surrounded by animals – dogs, goats, cows, chickens, a Shetland pony named Stardust, and a cockatiel named Charles. Older children read to the younger ones before bedtime, classics like “The Chronicles of Narnia,” and “A Wrinkle in Time” – and we’d fall asleep huddled together, three or four to a bed. These simple joys were interwoven into the fabric of our lives within the “big house family cult”.
Even the mystical aspects of the Lyman Family held a certain normalcy for those of us who knew no other way. The Ouija board, for instance, was a regular fixture. Shelves were filled with notebooks documenting conversations adults had with various spirits. Children were only permitted to communicate with one spirit, Faedra. Sometimes after dinner, we would gather around the Ouija board to summon her. The board itself was beautifully crafted, hand-carved wood, polished smooth, with a pointer covered in purple velvet. Only the older children could ask questions, and we younger ones would watch, mesmerized, as the pointer glided across the wood, gaining momentum, the soft swish of felt on wood the only sound as we waited, holding our breath for answers. One evening, the question posed was, “What does Guinevere need to learn?” The response came back that I was a lazy little girl. In the aftermath, I diligently cleaned every ashtray in the compound for weeks, a mix of shame and a secret thrill that Faedra, a spirit from beyond, even knew of my existence within the confines of our unique family cult structure.
Perhaps it’s understandable then, that when I was told I had to leave the Family in 1979, I pleaded to stay, tears streaming down my face. That night, August 25th, I wrote in my diary, “I am totally stunned and heartbroken. I am speechless. . . . I can’t live away from everything I love. I can’t sleep tonight, nothing. . . . But I swear to GOD I am coming back and I will be the same person. I will fight the world and get back where I belong.” Even now, decades later, writing about the Lyman Family remains emotionally charged. It’s been forty years since I begged to stay, and a part of me still seeks their approval, even though I recognize the group dynamics were those of a “big house family cult.”
My mother joined the Lyman Family at nineteen, pregnant with me. Within the Family structure, children were often separated from their biological parents early on, and my experience was no different. My mother and I rarely resided at the same compound, and I didn’t know her well. The afternoon she made her escape from the Family’s Manhattan brownstone, knowing she could never return, I was at the Family farm in Kansas.
In each compound, there was a designated house for children and another, larger one for adults, which we called the Big House. That evening, I was at dinner in the kids’ house, a boisterous scene with thirty of us eating and laughing, overseen by a few women. We were excited about a play we were creating, about a man who could end the world with a button, and historical figures trying to influence his decision. I was cast as Eleanor Roosevelt. Suddenly, the intercom buzzed – the link between the houses. One of the women approached our table and said, “They want you up at the Big House.”
Silence fell over the room. I assumed I was in trouble, though I couldn’t pinpoint any specific wrongdoing. Punishment for vague offenses was common; I was once reprimanded for looking at someone “with that Scorpio soul in your eyes.”
I stepped out into the summer night and began the uphill walk, listening to the crickets and katydids, nervously tugging at my braids. I longed for the solitude and quiet, to linger on the smooth slate pieces embedded in the grass path. But I didn’t dare slow down.
Arriving at the Big House, I sensed an unusual seriousness among the adults.
“Go talk to Jimmy,” someone directed. “He’s upstairs.”
A wave of relief washed over me. Jimmy was the least intimidating of the adult men. He had taught me banjo and sang children’s songs, always making us laugh.
When Jimmy told me my mother had left the Family, my initial reaction was relief. It meant I wasn’t in trouble. Then, fear for my mother’s fate brought tears. But Jimmy’s next words were far more unsettling: I was to join my mother, wherever she was.
Devastation washed over me. I hugged him, sobbing. “Why?” I managed to ask.
“Every kid here has at least one parent in the communities, and your father isn’t here,” he explained gently. I didn’t argue, just continued to beg and sob. The shock of being expelled from the only world I knew was immense. I had been raised to believe that “World People” – everyone outside of us – were soulless. Contact with them was seen as spiritually dangerous, soul-draining. It was a belief I was terrified to test.
The next morning, I was driven to the airport and put on a plane to Boston alone. There, at the Fort Hill compound in Roxbury, I picked up my four-year-old sister, Annalee – my mother’s second child, whose father had passed away three years prior. Again, my pleas to stay within the communities were ignored. The following day, we were driven to my grandmother’s house in a small New Jersey town, where I found my mother waiting on the front steps.
“I knew they’d send me Annalee,” she said, embracing my sister. “But I never thought I’d see you again.”
I looked up to see a rainbow arcing across the sky. “See?” my mother said. “It’s all going to be O.K.”
I couldn’t fathom that being true, not out here among the “World People.” I viewed my mother as a betrayer who had shattered my life, and I felt utterly alone. For weeks, I cried myself to sleep each night. Not because she had left assuming she’d never see me again – I, too, had been ready to live without her. My tears were of longing to return. Each night I told her so, and she would reply, “Just wait a few more weeks.” She, in my eyes, was the obstacle preventing my return to my “big house family cult” home.
Then came a new, daunting prospect: school. I was apprehensive, still haunted by the “soulless World People” concept. But there was also a flicker of excitement. Accustomed to constant company, being confined to my grandmother’s house for two months had been stifling. I craved people. I wore green velour bell-bottoms and a blouse adorned with large purple flowers, clothes I had proudly sewn myself within the community. My hair, long and shining, reached my lower back.
It was mid-year when we arrived at school. As my mother spoke with the administrator, I noticed girls crowding around the office window, peering at me.
“Where can we send for her school records?” the administrator asked.
“Oh, the school burned down,” my mother replied matter-of-factly. It was the first of many lies we would tell to appear “normal.” Soon, I learned to simply say I was from Boston.
School proved to be a minefield. While being introduced to my sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Winter, a girl rushed past, exclaiming, “The hamster is in the ziggurat, the hamster is in the ziggurat!” I felt a wave of despair. Would I ever decipher this outside world?
It turned out there was a model ziggurat in the classroom, perfectly sized for the class pet. Relief washed over me that this mystery was easily solved. Yet, my classmates sensed I was an outsider, a stranger navigating a strange land, newly emerged from the confines of my “big house family cult” upbringing and stepping into a world I barely understood.
