For You When I Am Gone

Twelve Essential Questions to Tell a Life Story

By: Steve Leder

Narrated by: Steve Leder

Length: 5 hrs and 2 mins

Publisher's summary

New York Times and Los Angeles Times bestseller!

From the bestselling author of The Beauty of What Remains, a guide to writing a meaningful letter about your life.

Writing an ethical will, a document that includes stories and reflections about your past, is an ancient tradition. It can include joy and regrets, and ultimately becomes both a way to remember a loved one who is gone and a primer on how to live a better, happier life. Beloved Rabbi Steve Leder has helped thousands of people to write their own ethical wills, and in this intimate book helps us write our own.

Because our culture privileges the material over the spiritual, we sometimes forget that our words carry greater value than any physical thing we can bequeath to our loved ones. Rabbi Leder provides all the right questions and prompts, including: What was your most painful regret and how can your loved ones avoid repeating it? When was a time you led with your heart instead of your head? What did you learn from your biggest failure?

Including examples of ethical wills from a broad range of voices—old and young, with and without children, famous and unknown—For You When I Am Gone inspires listeners to examine their own lives and turn them into something beautiful and meaningful for generations to come.

©2022 Steve Leder (P)2022 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"The is the book we all need to read. For You When I Am Gone is not only full of wisdom but offers questions and tools that will infuse your life with meaning. Rabbi Steve Leder is one of the great spiritual teachers of our time and this book is his most important to date." –Claire Bidwell Smith, author of Anxiety: The Missing Stage of Grief

"Rabbi Leder does it again with another book that looks deep into the taboo topic of death. He challenges the reader in this new book to dig deep into your own vulnerability to give honest answers to the hardest questions in life. Through reading and then answering those questions you learn about yourself, your life, and what you would like to leave behind for your loved ones to know. A must-read!"–Amanda Kloots, author of Live Your Life: My Story of Loving and Losing Nick Cordero

Couldn’t Stop Listening

Such a great listen! I heard so much of my own experiences in this book. So much kindness, love & mind changing thoughts. Really makes you think about life experiences and how you want to leave people behind feeling. I will listen to this many times!

Thought Provoking

So much to think about and stsrt putting on paper. So much I wish I had asked about and shared with, my parents before they left our world.

Don’t wait

Too many of us including myself always think we have tomorrow. This is what those who we leave behind or most long for. Everyone not only has an expiration date but their own legacy to leave. Money means nothing when you were a gone. Well written and easy to follow with examples of real people.

Life Changing

So happy I came upon this books us to it being advertised on TV. Love to hear more!

Everyone needs to read this book before they get living!

Awesome awareness and life altering look at what is important and the legacy we leave those following us in life!

Wonderful contribution

Great advice on how to do an ethical will to leave for loved ones. Great listen, i am sure i will listen to again.

A must read

This book is soothing for the soul. I will read it again and share w everyone I love.

Must read! I will read this over and over again.

Words to think about and live by. I will read this over and over again. I need these reminders. A new will coming soon.

Deeply moving

Rabbi Steve Leder has a gift for oratory and prose. He is a profoundly gifted speaker and here he gives us a roadmap to writing an ethical will. This book will move and inspire.

Thought provoking

Very good advice that I think everyone will be able to relate to. I highly recommend it