Ethical/ Heart Will Additional Resources

Frisch Brandt | Lasting Letters

Frisch Brandt is the President and Partner of the Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco, where she has worked for over 35 years. Since 2014, she has also been volunteering as a “letter midwife,” helping people at the end of life write what she calls “lasting letters” to their loved ones. Originally offered exclusively to patients who were terminally ill or in hospice, the service is now available to anyone who wants to write a letter to a loved one before it’s too late. Visit Frish’s website, Lasting Letters, to learn more, or contact her at mylastingletters@gmail.com

Personal Legacy Advisors

Founded by Susan Turnbull, the author of The Wealth of Your Life: A Step-by-Step Guide for Creating Your Ethical Will, Personal Legacy Advisors offers a guidebook, webinars, and workshops on creating an ethical will or heart will. It also offers for sale a set of 12 elegant Life Legacy Cards that invite the user to explore their personal story, values, and visions for their legacy. The cards are currently $22.95 per box. Susan also offers coaching services for those who are committed to writing an ethical will but need help organizing their thoughts and want an accountability partner to ensure it gets done.

Living Wisely

Founded by author and entrepreneur Traci Blus Ward and palliative care and hospice physician Barry Baines, M.D. Living Wisely offers a subscription-based online portal that helps users create ethical wills, legacy letters, life reflection stories and more. An annual subscription fee of $25 gives you unlimited access to the resources, which allow you to create your own personalized stories at your own pace. 

The Jewish Ethical Wills Project

An initiative of the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) Center for Pastoral Education and the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan, the Jewish Ethical Wills Project provides resources for community leaders who wish to offer guidance on creating ethical wills to members of their community. Open to educators, rabbis, social workers, chaplains, and others in a leadership role, the course focuses on helping others to articulate values and look at issues of legacy. Participants receive course materials that include lesson plans, videos, handouts, and more. 

To learn more about the Jewish Ethical Wills Project, email JTS at ethicalwills@jccmanhattan.org.

Stanford Letter Project

Offered by Stanford Medicine in Palo Alto, California, the Stanford Letter Project is an online resource that provides templates for writing letters to your doctors and loved ones about your values and goals. The project offers three templates: What Matters Most; Who Matters Most (A Life Review), and a Bucket List toolkit. The website also helps users create an advance directive for healthcare that communicates their healthcare goals and designates up to three people who can make decisions about their care if they are incapacitated and unable to do so themselves. The templates are available at no cost. 

Rabbi Steve Leder

Rabbi Leder wrote For You When I’m Gone, a book on creating an ethical will that is organized around 12 themes. He also created a companion workbook.

Personal Historians Networks

Regional networks of professional personal historians are good places to find services and assistance in creating personal, family and business histories in either print or digital formats. Some of those professionals have expertise in ethical wills, too. 

Personal Historians Network Northeast: https://www.phnn.org/

Personal Historians Northwest:https://personalhistoriansnw.com/join-us/