Collection
A guided life-writing process for tracing the moments, experiences, and memories that shaped a life — and continue to echo through it.
Collection
A guided life-writing process for tracing the moments, experiences, and memories that shaped a life — and continue to echo through it.
What is Collection
Some stories are only told once — unexpectedly, in the middle of ordinary life.
Others are repeated across years of family dinners, long car rides, celebrations, and quiet evenings at home.
And yet, even the stories we know well can become difficult to carry forward.
Because stories are carried not only through words, but through the people who lived them. Through personal context, through gesture, the emotion in a voice, and the feeling of what it was like to actually be there.
As time passes, details fade. Context disappears. Stories that once felt vivid and immediate can become harder to retell, understand, and pass on.
Collection is a one-on-one, guided life-writing process designed to help preserve the moments you want to carry forward — as a written volume of deeply personal narratives.
Through recorded conversations, reflection, and writing, we revisit the experiences, memories, and relationships that shaped a life.
Collection is a one-on-one, guided life-writing process designed to help preserve the moments you want to carry forward — as a written volume of deeply personal narratives.
Together, we recreate scenes from your personal history — with layers of sensory detail, emotional texture, and embodied lived experience — and write them to become a collection that can be read, shared, and revisited over time.
The story of one life often reflects the roots of a family and is inseparable from the stories of many others.
Through recorded conversations, reflection, and writing, we revisit the experiences, memories, and relationships that shaped a life.
Together, we recreate scenes from your personal history — with layers of sensory detail, emotional texture, and embodied lived experience — and write them to become a collection that can be read, shared, and revisited over time.
It carries histories, migrations, relationships, traditions, and ways of seeing the world.
These stories become part of how families understand where they come from, what shaped them, and what they carry forward.
Collection offers a rare space to tell your story by revisiting meaningful moments and being listened to with depth, attention, and care.
It is a process of companionship and a decision to let your story be witnessed. Of discovering meaning in one’s own memories, and allowing them to be held, shared, and remembered.
Collection offers a rare space to tell your story by revisiting meaningful moments and being listened to with depth, attention, and care.
It is a process of companionship and a decision to let your story be witnessed. Of discovering meaning in one’s own memories, and allowing them to be held, shared, and remembered.
How Collection Works
How Collection Works
Collection unfolds in three phases.
Each is designed to move at your pace — with space for memory, reflection, and a conversation that allows a life to be revisited with depth and care.
Each is designed to move at your pace — with space for memory, reflection, and a conversation that allows a life to be revisited with depth and care.
Collection unfolds in three phases.
The Map
Phase 1
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Together, we trace the arc of your story: the people, places, relationships, migrations, turning points, and moments that shaped who you became.
Nothing is too small. Nothing is already known.
Some memories arrive immediately. Others surface slowly through conversation, which becomes the foundation from which we build.
By the end of this session, we identify the moments we want to return to and explore more deeply throughout the process.
The first session typically lasts between 90 minutes and 2 hours.
Phase 2
The Deep Dives
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Through guided conversation, we slowly revisit the experience — not only through facts but through the memories that live in the body. We relive the atmosphere, sense the emotion, notice the gestures, and ask questions to reveal sensory details. What did the room feel like? What was happening around you? What did you not yet understand at the time?
Sessions are recorded and transcribed, allowing the focus to remain fully on remembering, telling, and deeply listening. Afterward, I shape the conversation into a crafted written narrative that preserves your voice, language, perspective, and lived experience.
If you enjoy writing and would like to contribute your own texts - prompts and guidance can be provided between sessions. If writing is difficult or not preferred, the recorded conversations serve as the full foundation of the work. Both paths are fully supported.
One session becomes one written piece.
One moment becomes part of a larger collection.
Phase 3
Phase 1
The Collection
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When the process is complete, the written pieces are brought together into a single volume: a journey through the moments, relationships, and experiences that shaped who you are.
The final Collection can be delivered digitally, physically, or both.
* The printed physical volume is quoted separately based on your chosen format.
Some create it for themselves — a record of a life thoughtfully witnessed. Others create it as a gift to share with children and grandchildren, allowing their story to echo through future generations.
The Deep Dives
Phase 2
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Through guided conversation, we slowly revisit the experience — not only through facts but through the memories that live in the body. We relive the atmosphere, sense the emotion, notice the gestures, and ask questions to reveal sensory details. What did the room feel like? What was happening around you? What did you not yet understand at the time?
Sessions are recorded and transcribed, allowing the focus to remain fully on remembering, telling, and deeply listening. Afterward, I shape the conversation into a crafted written narrative that preserves your voice, language, perspective, and lived experience.
If you enjoy writing and would like to contribute your own texts - prompts and guidance can be provided between sessions. If writing is difficult or not preferred, the recorded conversations serve as the full foundation of the work. Both paths are fully supported.
One session becomes one written piece.
One moment becomes part of a larger collection.
Phase 3
Collection is offered in two formats:
Collection of 5 Moments
Five defining chapters — A portrait of the moments that mattered most, gathered over approximately 3 months with sessions every two weeks.
✧ One mapping session
✧ Five guided deep-dive sessions
✧ Five crafted written narratives
✧ One completed Collection
Collection of 10 Moments
✧ One mapping session
✧ Ten guided deep-dive sessions
✧ Ten crafted written narratives
✧ One completed Collection
Every Collection is built around your pace and your needs — the process is flexible, and we move at a rhythm that feels right for you.
We begin with a free 20-minute conversation
To explore the story you want to preserve and determine which Collection best fits your needs.
Ten chapters — A wide journey through a life's most significant experiences, gathered over approximately 5–6 months with sessions every two weeks.
Collection is offered in two formats:
Collection of 5 Moments
Five defining chapters — A portrait of the moments that mattered most, gathered over approximately 3 months with sessions every two weeks.
✧ One mapping session
✧ Five guided deep-dive sessions
✧ Five crafted written narratives
✧ One completed Collection
Collection of 10 Moments
Ten chapters — A wide journey through a life's most significant experiences, gathered over approximately 5–6 months with sessions every two weeks.
✧ One mapping session
✧ Ten guided deep-dive sessions
✧ Ten crafted written narratives
✧ One completed Collection
Every Collection is built around your pace and your needs — the process is flexible, and we move at a rhythm that feels right for you.
What the Stories Become
Collection preserves lived experience through writing — by embodying scenes from your life and vividly conveying your memories, atmosphere, and voice.
These stories become pieces that can be revisited, shared, and carried forward across generations.
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We move forward across a wide-open square and reach the bottom of a wide, long staircase. Pine trees tower on either side, offering some shade, but our movement carries us through the center. I look up and see the big sign on top of the building at the top of the stairs, 'Entirety' it says in bold-font Hebrew letters. In my six-year-old eyes, this whole picture looks majestic, even though I know it's just a school supplies store. But this name - 'Entirety', makes me feel like I'm about to enter a hall of endless possibilities. I want to rush up the stairs, but their low and wide structure cancels my six-year-old leg's momentum, and I pace myself to Mom’s rhythm.
We reach the top and enter the store. A fresh smell of clean paper comes to my nose. I like it. It makes me want to browse all the notebooks and inhale, fill myself with a sense of new beginnings and opportunities.
This store is so big!Where do we go first? We need so many things! Let's get everything! My thoughts all mix inside my head as I quietly follow Mom to take a cart. Then, she takes out a piece of paper from her purse and says, "Here is a list of supplies you’ll need this semester. Let's go find them."
We go down the first aisle. 'Notebook covers.' There are so many products that my eyes don't know where to look first.
Then I hear my mom's confident voice say, "Let's put in the cart all the options you like, then we will narrow it down." By the end of her sentence, I already had a handful of covers in my hands. I place them in the cart and stroll down the aisle, picking up more covers I like and piling them in: colorful, transparent, cartoon-themed, animal prints, nature images, and more. After I scan the entire aisle, Mom helps me take all the covers out of the cart and display them on the floor. We sit down together.
"OK, so this semester, you will have five classes," Mom says, "So you'll need five covers for five notebooks." My eyes widen as I look at my pile. Five? How will I choose now? These are all the best options in the store. I sit quietly, trying to think about what to do. How to move forward. How to solve it.
Without waiting for frustration to take over this experience, Mom says, "Let's use the elimination system.” I look up at her. Her big brown eyes hold a little smile behind her glasses, but she won’t let it fully out, won't let it challenge how serious this moment is for me.
“Divide your covers into four groups,” Mom continues, “where group 1 is the covers you think are the most special and group 4 is the ones that are only OK and not very exciting". Well, I say in my mind as I suddenly see a path in this mess, this one I absolutely love! And those three are cute, but no more than that. And those two, I remember my best friend has exactly the same, so I don't want her to think that I copied her. I sat there for a while, concentrating on different qualities, debating with myself, making decisions. Eventually, four groups emerged. And together, Mom and I send groups 3 and 4 back to the shelf. We ended up with ten optional covers. I felt lighter, as if something heavy just went off my shoulders. But it's still not over.
"Now, try to divide the covers that are left into three groups," Mom said with an intentionally ambitious look, as if to tell me - you are already doing it, girl.
This is tough, I thought. These are all great choices! My eyes begin to lose focus, as they often do when I know I’m expected to perform but feel like I can't deliver.
“What is unique about this cover?” Mom asks and doesn’t let me spin away in my head.
“To what class do I think you want to use this one, and why?” She continues after I answer.
“What do you feel when you’re looking at this one?” And through my answers to her, I realize that I suddenly hear my own thoughts and say goodbye to three more covers.
Sitting in our jeans on the store’s floor, Mom and I sort, we discuss each option’s pros and cons, compare and explore each product’s individual qualities. I am focusing on the site of choice, closely experiencing each component, and finding a path to navigate the overwhelming uncertainty within the culture of abundance.
A few minutes later, back on my feet, I look down into the cart where my most desired five notebook covers lay. A satisfied little smile stretches on my face as my chin lifts proudly. Five stories of the wonders of questioning, the layers of choosing.
“Next on the list - binders!” Mom says with a smile as we move on to the next aisle.
I close my laptop after I finish writing the piece. But I don’t move from my seat. I only have a few minutes to stay here, in that memory, at six-years-old with my mom on the store’s floor, and I take it with both hands, not letting it go.
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Mom sets a cooler bag on the picnic table bench at the shore of the Kineret, the only lake in Israel. My big brother and I sit next to each other on the other side of the table, dripping water off our bathing suits.
I wonder if those drops even hit the ground or just vaporized midway under the 33°C/92°F degree conditions. The heat is like a dense wrapping cloud of warm air, and swimming in the relatively cool lake water stimulates our nine- and six-year-old appetites.
My brother distributes disposable plates to the three of us while I watch Mom open the cooler bag’s zipper and unpack all the goods she meticulously packed the night before.
Little boxes filled with childhood flavors.
-Jan 27, 2022- One month before the loss
I am walking through the hospital entrance doors. My body feels the weight shift in contrast to the luggage hanging off my shoulder.
I hit the fifth-floor button, and the elevator announces, “Surgical Department.” Thanks for voicing elevator! Why won’t you just say – your about-to-be-gone mother’s floor, now won’t you?! Shake it off. I get edgy so easily these days.
I turn right. Room 30. “Special dinner delivery,” I cheerfully say, and place a fully stocked cooler bag on the chair.
Mom smiles with soft eyes that wrap a familiar dense cloud of warm air around my movement.
I open the zipper and unpack Mom’s meals for the next three days. Three large bags of total parenteral nutrition.
Your Collection,
in Your Hands
When the process is complete, your Collection is compiled, designed, and thoughtfully prepared for delivery.
You choose the format that feels right.
Digital
A beautifully designed PDF — formatted for reading, sharing, and storing. Yours to keep, revisit, send to family, or print at any time.
Printed
A bound physical volume, delivered to your door. A book that remains present in a family’s life — opened during conversations, shared with loved ones, and revisited across time.
Both
One to keep close. One to share.
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“After you drop Robin and me at school today, you won’t have kids anymore”.
My breath stops for a few seconds. I feel pierced.
My first, primal reaction is to immediately revoke his words. Do not ever say that. It sounds so horrible. But the short lack of breath makes me stay quiet for a few more moments.
I finish unbuckling Robin from her rear-facing car seat. I hold her tightly with one arm, place a big bag with diapers, bottles, and extra clothes on my shoulder, and stretch my other hand for Rainier. He holds on to it.
How does he know, so precisely. A rush of thoughts suddenly clarifies. He feels the nuances of such deep feelings. Not shying away from them. Voicing a truthful inquiry, touching the edges of intense experience. And asks, about parting, on its layers, on its hardships.
Suddenly, a smile sprouts from within me, with a hint of gratitude, stretching my lips, contrasting with all the stress of this morning. Robin’s first day in school. My little bird. Born just yesterday, and already — school.
I let my thumb caress Rainier’s hand while the rest of my fingers wrap around it, and glance down at him as we step away from the car. “I will have kids,” I say to him and myself, “they’ll just be in school.”
* The printed physical volume is quoted separately based on your chosen format.
We begin with a free 20-minute conversation
To explore the story you want to preserve and determine which Collection best fits your needs.
