Resources

NEW: Women's Lives, Women's Legacies, 2012 2nd Edition

Passing Your Beliefs and Blessings To Future Generations (Creating your own Spiritual-Ethical Will) by Rachael Freed, is the recipient of the GOLD AWARD in the Healthcare/Book category, 2004 National Mature Media Awards. Read an excerpt.

The Legacy Workbook
for the Busy Woman

A Step-by-Step Guide for Writing a Spiritual-Ethical Will in Two Hours or Less by Rachael Freed. This workbook is newly available to download so it can be used on your computer. Read an excerpt.

Coming Soon:

Harvesting the Wisdom of Our Lives:
An Intergenerational Legacy Workbook
for Seniors and Their Families by Rachael Freed

 

Baines, Barry K

Ethical Wills: Putting Your Values on Paper - Provides basic information for creating an ethical will with examples of dif- ferent age groups. Also visit ethicalwill.com for current Ethical Will information.

Edelman, Marian Wright

The Measure of Our Success: A Letter to my Children and Yours - A small, powerful book: a spiritual-ethical will for her sons. It focuses on family legacy, passing on the Legacy of Service, a Letter to her Sons, and 25 Lessons for Life.

Eve, Nomi

The Family Orchard - A beautifully written fictional adventure about six generations of a Jewish family emigrating from Eastern Europe to Palestine to America. Eve uses the counterpoint of her father's "factual account" and her imaginative "story". A fictional family legacy from a woman's perspective.

Freed, Rachael A.

The Heartmates Journal: A Companion for Partners of People with Serious Illness - A guided, yearlong, interactive journal to record the concerns, issues and feelings that a heartmate experiences in coming to a new normal after a diagnosis… lifestyle and emotional needs, physical and spiritual concerns, needs for privacy, support and community are addressed. — Topics are useful for women struggling to deal with crises of aging. And, Heartmates: A Guide for the Spouse and Family of the Heart Patient, a self-help book for women dealing with chronic and life-threatening illness.

The Memoirs of Gluckel of Hameln

The Memoirs of Gluckel of Hameln - Translated by Marvin Lowenthal. The only extant pre-modern spiritual-ethical will written by a woman, from 1690. 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 pass that history on to their children and grandchildren.

Reimer, Jack & Nathaniel Stampfer

Reimer, Jack & Nathaniel Stampfer (editors and annotators). So that Your Values Live On - Ethical Wills and How to Prepare Them - A collection of traditional ethical wills: 50+ are men's wills, about a dozen are women's. Includes a six page guide to writing an ethical will, with suggestions for topics to be covered, and a brief consideration about conveying the document.

Remen, Rachel Naomi, MD

Kitchen Table Wisdom - A collection of inspiring stories of cancer patients related to experiences of love and loneliness, healing, loss and freedom, intimacy and forgiveness. She extols the power of storytelling to "weave us together as a family" and as a human community. My Grandfather's Blessings, a sequel that works.

Strassfeld, Sharon

Everything I Know, Basic Life Rules from a Jewish Mother - A book-long spiritual-ethical will, Strassfeld writes to her daughter as she leaves home for college. A combination of stories expressing family and cultural values, direct instruction (basic rules and values to live by), and apologies for pain she caused her, accepting herself, expressing her love, naming and appreciating her daughter's gifts and limitations as she sees them.