Write Your Way Home

Therapeutic writing allows us access to our inner world, with unique exercises that enable us to grow, understand ourselves, and change our lives for the better. With hundreds of Torah sources and clear instructions, Write Your Way Home guides its readers to effective writing exercises that will help them develop in middos, inner satisfaction, relationships, and avodas Hashem. This book will change your life. Try it! “This is a beautiful book. The author has developed a Torah-based self-help system by which one writes healthy thinking into their heart. I am certain this will enhance the lifestyle of all who read and experience the book.” —Rav Yitzchak Berkovits, Rosh Yeshivas Aish HaTorah “The authors... have written a wonderful manual that will help many people upgrade their middos.... The tools and techniques have the potential to transform someone’s way of being in amazing ways.” —Rabbi Zelig Pliskin, author and counselor “Occasionally, a therapeutic writing book appears that offers sensitive original thinking on the often-praised topic of writing for healing, growth, and change. Write Your Way Home is such a book. Yocheved Rottenberg ... has created a pioneering work brimming with clarity, wisdom, and grace.” —Kathleen Adams, Founder/Director, Center for Journal Therapy and Therapeutic Writing Institute “Yocheved Rottenberg guides her readers to dive into the center of their own beings with her step-by-step journaling companion. Write Your Way Home brings the wisdom of Judaism together with sound psychological principles in order to help guide readers on a journey to their very best selves.” —Sarah Chana Radcliffe, author of Better Behavior Now! “This monumental volume will one day be known as a classic of twenty-first century Torah literature, and as a landmark in contemporary Jewish publishing.” —Sarah Shapiro, author of Growing with My Children REVIEWS:  "What Yocheved has treated us to for years with her incomparable workshops, she has now gifted us at home.  Write Your Way Home is much more than a book.  It is an opportunity.  And opportunity to connect more, to respect more, to love more — the most important person in your life — yourself!  With a solid foundation of Torah wisdom and the unparalleled tool that is journal writing, this book will be a guide and friend as you journey through the joys and challenges of life!" Chava Maslin, Jerusalem  ___________________   Reading this book was like confiding in my best friend, crying to my mother, laughing with my sisters, and talking things over with a favorite teacher all wrapped into one gorgeously laid out, clear, and concise package. Yocheved Rottenberg’s Write Your Way Home  deserves to be savored like Swiss chocolate, but I devoured it. In times of uncertainty and fear, it’s proven to be a steady guide and a reassuring presence sitting comfortingly on my nightstand. Beginning with her stirring poem, all the way to the conclusion, reading this book was the most relaxing part of my day these past few weeks. It maximized “me time” by catering to both the physical and emotional. For those of you allergic to self-help books, this isn’t one of them. Rather Yocheved, along with Chaya Hinda Allen’s beautifully clear introductions, takes you by the hand and shows you your deepest desire: your best self. The self that you deserve to be and the life that you deserve to live. No writing experience is necessary, just a small slot of time at some point during your day, a pencil or pen, sometimes colored markers to brighten things up, and an open mind as Yocheved challenges you with eye-opening writing exercises. They are all simple in execution, but delve deep inside, asking you to be open with yourself and honest with your journey. You’ll learn about Journal to The Self Techniques, based on the teachings of Kathleen Adams, and how to incorporate these wonderfully concise assignments into your daily routine. It will arm you with an arsenal of tools, the Alpha Poem, the Clusters, the lists of 100. These will be your go-tos, your friends, your diaries. The book’s chapters span topics like resilience, vulnerability, love, panic, fear, loneliness… all the emotions we ride in a day, all the feelings we push down, all the buried grudges and resentments...Yocheved shows us how we can utilize it all, how we can take all that we were given, all that we’ve endured, and build something beautiful out of it. Rav Yisrael Salanter is quoted in its pages saying “ a Man can live until 70 years and still not know himself.” Frighteningly true, this book guides you to self-knowledge, awareness, love, and acceptance. Timed exercises, inspirational quotes, honest reflection, and refreshing honesty fill its pages, and you are meant to fill the rest.  So don’t hold back. Dive in. And allow Yocheved to show you how to finally and at long last, write your way home. Ariella Schiller, The Jewish Press