Out of the Cold
Stories drawn from life
A memoir of survival, faith and transformation
Out of the Cold is a deeply personal memoir about abandonment, trauma, addiction, faith, forgiveness and the long road towards healing.
My story begins in Finland, where I was abandoned as a baby and later placed in an orphanage. At five years old, I came to Australia, carrying experiences I was far too young to understand.
The years that followed were marked by instability, rejection and pain. As I grew older, the things that had never been dealt with began to surface through anger, drugs, alcohol, crime and a desperate search for somewhere to belong.
But this is not where my story ends.
Out of the Cold is ultimately a story about what happened when faith, love and hope began to enter places that had once seemed beyond repair.
A story that begins in brokenness
My earliest years were shaped by abandonment and trauma.
I was passed between families, placed in an orphanage and eventually sent alone to Australia at the age of five. By then, the impact of what I had experienced had left me unable to speak.
Growing up, I desperately wanted to belong and to be loved.
In my teenage years, the pain I had carried for so long erupted. Rejection, abuse and a fractured sense of identity drew me into a destructive life of alcohol, drugs, crime and homelessness.
There were moments when I could not imagine life becoming anything different.
Looking back now, however, I can see that hope remained, even when I did not recognise it.
This is not a story of an overnight transformation
One of the things that matters most to me about Out of the Cold is that it does not present healing as something simple or immediate.
My life did not suddenly change because I found faith.
The journey was long.
There were setbacks, questions, struggles and times when I returned to old patterns. Healing meant facing experiences I had buried for years and learning to talk about feelings I had never known how to express.
It meant beginning to understand love differently.
It meant learning that change could happen layer by layer.
In the depths of my brokenness, I encountered not judgement, but a love strong enough to reach me and a God who refused to let me go.
At the heart of Out of the Cold is that long road from brokenness towards freedom.
When love was shown rather than simply spoken
A significant turning point in my life came through a woman named Melitta.
She entered my life when I was a young mother and showed me something I had rarely experienced before: unconditional love and unreserved care.
She gave me her time. She helped with my children and my home. She listened to me. She was patient with me, and she did not walk away when I tested that kindness.
For the first time, someone asked me how I felt about the things that had happened in my life.
That simple question opened something in me.
Over time, Melitta helped me understand faith not only through words, but through the way she lived it. I began to see that if this was what the love of Jesus looked like in another person, then perhaps it was something I wanted to know for myself.
That became the beginning of a much deeper journey of healing.
Forgiveness and the freedom it can bring
Forgiveness is one of the central themes running through Out of the Cold.
For many years I carried anger, bitterness and hatred towards people who had hurt me. Those feelings had become so deeply embedded that I could feel them physically.
Learning about forgiveness changed the way I understood freedom.
It did not mean pretending that what happened was acceptable. It did not erase the past.
For me, forgiveness became a way of no longer allowing the past to keep its hold on me.
There were times when forgiveness had to be revisited. Forgiving myself was often harder than forgiving other people.
But there were also moments when I realised something within me had genuinely changed.
Years after some of the worst experiences of my life, I unexpectedly saw people who had hurt me deeply and discovered that I no longer felt the hatred I once carried.
In one of those moments, my response was compassion.
That surprised even me.
Addiction, faith and finding freedom
I also write openly about my struggle with alcohol.
For years, I couldn't understand why I could not simply stop.
I tried different ways of controlling my drinking, but none of them lasted. Even while going to church, reading the Bible, helping others and doing the things I thought a Christian should do, I was still struggling privately.
One thing I want people to understand about addiction is that it is not simply a matter of trying harder.
My eventual freedom from alcohol came after a long journey.
During the pandemic, I found an online Christian recovery group based in the United States. Through that group, one particular Bible verse changed something in me.
I had long known the words, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.”
Then I was challenged with another thought:
To know the truth is to live the truth.
Something clicked.
I realised I needed not only to know what I believed, but to live it.
That became another turning point.
Love, family and restoration
Out of the Cold is not only about what happened to me as a child.
It is also about motherhood, relationships, the consequences of my own choices and the ongoing work of healing within a family.
I loved my children deeply, but during the years when I was drinking, I was not always the stable mother I wanted to be. Part of my journey has meant being honest about that too.
Later in life, another unexpected part of the story unfolded when I became the daily carer for my adoptive mother during the final years of her life.
Our relationship had been difficult, but I came to realise that she too had lived without experiencing the kind of unconditional love I had spent so much of my own life searching for.
I felt strongly that I was meant to give that love to her.
I was fifty-four when I finally told her, “I love you.”
For the first time in my life, she looked into my eyes and said:
“I love you too.”
It was one of the most beautiful moments of my life.
Who I wrote this book for
From the time I first began imagining this book, I pictured it reaching people who were hurting.
People struggling with addiction.
People who feel unseen.
People who have lost hope.
People who have experienced trauma or rejection.
People who wonder if their past has already decided what the rest of their life will become.
I know every person's experience is different. My story cannot provide easy answers for someone else's life.
But I hope it can offer something.
A sense that you are not alone.
A reason to keep going.
A reminder that healing can take time.
And perhaps some hope that your story is not finished yet.
A story of grace
At its heart, Out of the Cold is a story of God's grace.
It is a story of being broken and slowly rebuilt.
Of discovering love after spending so much of life searching for it.
Of learning to forgive.
Of falling, getting back up and continuing.
Of discovering that faith does not mean the absence of struggle.
And of looking back over a life that once seemed destined for destruction and seeing something very different.
If the little girl I once was, standing alone in the cold in Finland, could see my life today, I know what I would want to tell her:
“It is going to be alright. Life will get better.”
Buy Out of the Cold
Out of the Cold is available through selected booksellers and online retailers.
Rather than purchasing directly through this website, you can choose from the available retailers below.
Buy Out of the Cold
You can also hear more about the story behind the book through my interviews and book launch conversation.
What a reader have said
“Everybody has a story to tell, but not everyone is willing to tell it. Liisa's story includes the pain of abandonment, rejection, abuse, etc., and it leads her to stability and triumph. The lesson is always in the journey.
Learn from hers.”
Joseph Wooten
Three-time Grammy-nominated musician
Keyboardist, Steve Miller Band
Founder, Joseph Wooten & The Hands of Soul
Member of the Wooten brothers
What a reader have said
“Liisa's story is one of raw honesty, unimaginable pain, and breathtaking redemption. With remarkable courage, she invites us into the darkest corners of her past - abandonment, abuse, family violence, rebellion, and homelessness — and then points us toward the light that changed everything. Through the kindness of a stranger, Liisa met the Saviour who rescued, redeemed, and restored her life. Her willingness to share her journey with such vulnerability and grace is an act of profound bravery. This book is not just a testimony of survival, but of divine transformation — a story that will move you deeply and remind you that no life is ever too broken for hope.”
Nicole Partridge
Journalist and Writer
Your story is not over
Out of the Cold took almost forty years to reach publication, but the story itself began much earlier.
It is a story I once wrote simply because I needed to get the memories out of my head and onto paper.
Over time, it became something more.
My hope now is that the story reaches the people who need it and reminds them that even after broken beginnings, difficult choices and long seasons of pain, there can still be healing, freedom and hope.
No matter how broken the beginning, your story is not over.