Resources
|
Organizations
|
Products
|
Articles
|
Books
|
Ethical Wills
—
ethicalwill.com
Mary O'Brien Tyrell explains the process of writing memoirs for over 100 people over 75 years of age, and helps them design rituals and celebrations to present their bound books to family and community.)
Women's Legacies
—
womenslegacies.com
For putting your legacy online! Creating a website for your legacy means you are using a medium that can provide a "copy" to all members of your family. And the website can be a 'living' legacy that can grow and change over time. You can even invite other family members to participate. (The website may be open to the public or password protected for privacy.)
Back to Top
Great legacy related products coming soon!
Back to Top
Health Magazine
, June 2003
Article regarding ethical wills.
Reader's Digest
, “Leave A Message“, June 2002. pg. 198
Barry Baines' book,
Ethical Wills: Putting Your Values on Paper
was highlighed in this article.
Back to Top
Tuesdays With Morrie
Albom, Mitch: Doubleday, 1997
This book provides the essence of what ethical wills are all about. Morrie's story is told with compassion and courage.
Available through Amazon.com
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death
On December 8 1995, Elle magazine editor-in-chief Bauby suffered a stroke and lapsed into a coma. He awoke 20 days later, mentally aware of his surroundings but physically paralyzed with the exception of some movement in his head and left eye. Eye movements and blinking a code representing letters of the alphabet became his sole means of communication. It is also how he dictated this warm, sad, and extraordinary memoir. Bauby's thoughts on the illness, the hospital, family, friends, career, and life before and after the stroke appear with considerable humor and humanity.
Available through Amazon.com
At Grandmother's Table: Women Write about Food, Life, and the Enduring Bond Between Grandmothers and Granddaughters
Berkeley, Ellen Perry: Fairview Press, 2000
Stories, pictures and poems about the generation to generation bond. Read granddaughters' stories about their immigrant grandmothers, and share their favorite recipes.
Available through Amazon.com
The Millionth Circle: How to Change Ourselves and The World
Bolen, Jean Shinoda: Conari Press, 1999
A discussion of the power of women's circles to accelerate humanity's shift to a post-patriarchal era. Bolen believes that a women's circle "is an archetypal form that feels familiar to the psyches of most women. It's personal and egalitarian....enhances collaborative undertakings...."
Available through Amazon.com
Transitions
Bridges, William: Perseus Books Group, 1980
Writing as an activity in the neutral zone, the time between the ending of the old and the beginning of the new...writing about Odysseus' long journey home and what he learns on the way. Although about a male archetype and written by a male writer, this book is invaluable if what has brought you to writing your legacy of values is a transition or a lifecrisis.
Available through Amazon.com
The Measure of Our Success: A Letter to my Children and Yours
Edelman, Marian Wright: Perennial Currents, 1993
A small, powerful book which is a spiritual-ethical will for Marian's sons. It focuses on family legacy, Passing on the Legacy of Service, a Letter to her Sons, and 25 Lessons for Life
Available through Amazon.com
The Family Orchard
Eve, Nomi: Knopf, 2000
A marvelous adventure into the past, for those yearning to find their roots...about 6 generations of a Jewish family emigrating from Eastern Europe to Palestine to America. Beautifully written, using the counterpoint of her father's "factual account" and her imaginative and sensual "story" from a woman's perspective.
Available through Amazon.com
Tt The Will of the Body, Reflections on Illness
Frank, Arthur W.: University Of Chicago Press, 1997
Arthur who dealt with heart disease and cancer before he was forty, writes of life meaning, providing a legacy that is honest, compassionate, angry and loving. He deeply believes in the healing power of expressing one's story and having it witnessed. His books are real, and for those who come to writing a legacy of values because of being confronted with a life threatening illness, Arthur's work is inspiring.
Available through Amazon.com
Man's Search For Meaning
Frankl, Viktor E.: Touchstone, 1984
This book stresses our ability to transcend suffering and find meaning in our lives regardless of the life circumstances within which we find ourselves.
Available through Amazon.com
After Long Silence
Fremont, Helen: Delta, 2000
A family memoir...a young woman searches her parents' and aunt's history to understand her own identity...breaking through the secrets of pain in a Jewish/Polish family that survived the Holocaust by their wits and skills, by converting to Catholicism; and in the process losing their identity, their ability to connect, even their names.
Available through Amazon.com
To Our Children's Children: Preserving Family Histories for Generations to Come
Greene, Bob & D.G. Fulford: Doubleday, 1993
A book of questions from various arenas of life ... suggests that finding the meaning of family history is in telling personal anecdotes which answer the questions in this book, rather than attempting a history of a period.
Available through Amazon.com
The Memoirs of Glückel of Hameln
Translated by Marvin Lowenthal: Schocken, 1987
The only extant pre-modern spiritual-ethical will written by a woman, from 1690. She reported that she wrote to "keep herself sane" and to provide her children a history so they "would know from what sort of people they had sprung" and would be able to pass that history on to their children and grandchildren.
Available through Amazon.com
The Path: Creating Your Personal Mission Statement for Work and Life
Jones, Laurie Beth: Hyperion, 1998
In The Path, Laurie Beth Jones, author of the national bestseller Jesus CEO, provides inspiring and practical advice to lead listeners through every step of both defining and fulfilling a mission.
Available through Amazon.com!
Put Your Heart on Paper: Staying Connected in a Loose-Ends World
Klauser, Henriette Anne: Bantam, 1995
Use the written word to build relationships and heal wounds in an excellent guide to keeping interactive journals, diaries, and written communications. Writing can provide continuity and connections between generations: Klauser’s promotes maintaining this continuity, telling how to write more effectively.
Available through Amazon.com
Life Review: A Natural Process
Levin, Rhoda F.
Readings in Psychosynthesis Theory, Process, & Practice, The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, The Department of Applied Psychology, Toronto, 1985, pp. 82-96. an essay on the components and purposes of life review, its use as a literary story-telling technique in Tolstoy, its appearance in near-death experiences, and the conscious use of the review to move toward acceptance of life and death -- out of print.
Back to Top
After Death: How People Around the World Map the Journey After Life
Miller, Sukie, Ph.D. with Suzanne Lipsett: Simon & Schuster, 1998
A study of beliefs about what happens after death in a variety of cultures around the world, and how those beliefs impact individuals' handling of the fact that they have a dread disease and are dying.
Available through Amazon.com
Create Your Personal Sacred Text
Parish, Bobbi L.: Broadway, 1999
Parish, a marriage and family therapist, has created a curious and affecting handbook for spiritual renewal. She believes this can be assisted by creating one's own sacred textAby selecting from existing texts of almost any kind, or writing one's own scripture in any genre.
Available through Amazon.com
Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation
Parker, Palmer J.: Jossey-Bass, 1999
With wisdom, compassion, and gentle humor, Parker J. Palmer invites us to listen to the inner teacher and follow its leadings toward a sense of meaning and purpose. Telling stories from his own life and the lives of others who have made a difference, he shares insights gained from darkness and depression as well as fulfillment and joy.
Available through Amazon.com
Our Fathers' Wells
Pitzele, Peter: Harpercollins, 1996
Describes bibliodrama (psychodrama, using biblical characters) in search for spiritual understanding ... about patriarchy of Genesis, the lonely quest for God, the centrality of the binding of Isaac, and the sibling issues of brothers. a readable book of midrashim (lore, commentary, interpretation, story)
Available through Amazon.com!
So that Your Values Live On: Ethical Wills and How to Prepare them
Reimer, Jack & Nathaniel Stampfer (editors and annotators): Jewish Lights Publishing, 1994
A collection of traditional wills, wills from the Holocaust, Israel, of modern and contemporary Jews, and from modern Jewish literature, 50+ are men's wills, about a dozen are women's.
Available through Amazon.com!
Kitchen Table Wisdom
Remen, Rachel Naomi, MD: Riverhead Books, 1997
A collection of "inspiring, moving, important" stories told by Remen of cancer patients she has worked with, focusing on qualities of love and loneliness, healing, loss and freedom, intimacy and forgiveness. In her introduction she writes at length of the power of story telling to connect us and our unique stories to the human story "weaving us together as a family" and as a human community
Available through Amazon.com!
From Age-ing to Sage-ing
Schacter-Shalomi, Zalman and Miller, Ronald: Warner Books, 1997
A guidebook to the aging process. Presents a profound new vision for growing older. Many exercises suggested in this book are helpful to the process of writing an ethical will.
Available through Amazon.com
Tear Soup
Schweibert, Pat and DeKlyen: Grief Watch, 2001
In this modern fable, accompanied with full color illustrations, a woman who has suffered a terrible (unnamed) loss cooks up a special batch of "tear soup," blending the unique ingredients of her life into the grief process. Along the way she dispenses a recipe of sound advice for those who are in mourning or know someone who has suffered a loss.
Available through Amazon.com
Legacy: A Step by Step Guide to Writing Your Personal History
Spence, Linda: Swallow Press, 1997
Linda Spence's
Legacy
proves to be just that: the creation of a family heirloom that money couldn't buy. Through a series of thought-provoking questions about each phase in human life, Spence helps readers record their personal history, think back to feelings that any number of snapshots could never capture, and reflect upon their lives
Available through Amazon.com
Everything I Know, Basic Life Rules from a Jewish Mother
Strassfeld, Sharon: Scribner, 1998
Co-author of The Jewish Catalogs Strassfeld writes to her daughter with whom she has launched the book is a combination of stories expressing the values she and her family and Jewish community have, direct instruction in basic rules and values to live by, and straight communication accepting her own personality, expressing her love, naming and appreciating her daughter's gifts and limitations as she sees them, and apologies for pain she caused her.
Available through Amazon.com!
The Christian Imagination: The Practice of Faith in Literature and Writing
Taylor, Daniel: Shaw, 2002
An essay, based in part on Tell Me a Story, that investigates the role of stories--literary and personal--in our lives.
Available through Amazon.com!
The Book Of Jewish Values: A Day-to-day Guide to Ethical Living
Telushkin, Rabbi Joseph: Harmony/Bell Tower, 2000
Rabbi Telushkin, author of ten previous books, has offered 365 nuggets of rabbinical advice on everything from anger to Maimonides to the telephone. This is the latest of many recent publications to address the resurgence of Jewish spiritual life, and it is one of the more appealing entries; for many readers it will feel like a few minutes a day on the synagogue steps with a favorite rabbi.
Available through Amazon.com!
The Family Tree
Tepper, Sheri S: Eos, 1998
Categorized as "contemporary speculative fiction," this clever and often humorous novel integrates a "good read" with an understanding of the concept and reality of legacy. Tepper includes the whole of the human community and its legacy from our time to a future three thousand years from now. Useful in "thinking big" and contemplating individual and communal legacy and responsibility.
Available through Amazon.com
Because God Loves Stories: An Anthology of Jewish Storytelling
Zeitlin, Steve, editor: Fireside, 1997
Stories, parables -- the idea that stories help us create the meaning of our lives, which we yearn for.
Available through Amazon.com
Seat of the Soul
Zukov, Gary: Free Press, 1990
Gary Zukov believes that humans are immortal souls first, physical beings second, and that once we become conscious of this transformation--once we align our personalities with our soul--we will stimulate our spiritual growth and become better people in the process.
Available through Amazon.com
