As you may have noticed, I am passionate about the power of books to help us learn, grow, imagine and be inspired to live our own compelling stories. So, here is a short collection of relevant, insightful books on my bookshelf I would like to share with you for both your enrichment and enjoyment.
— Warmly, your Attorney, Erin
Functioning Families
Just as individual relationships take work, your family system needs nurturing as well. That looks more like building an intentional culture of shared values and rhythms, clear expectations, and routine habits repeated over time. This category is about the structures that turn a household into a functioning, thriving, multigenerational family team.
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The Tech-Wise Family — Andy Crouch: A framework for putting technology in its proper place in the home so it serves the family's character and relationships instead of dominating them. Good for a parent feeling like screens have quietly taken over family life and wanting a values-based reset.
Family Revision — Jeremy Pryor: Makes the case for restructuring family life around a shared mission and multigenerational purpose, rather than default modern patterns. Good for someone wanting to rethink family structure from the ground up, not just tweak habits.
Habits of the Household — Justin Whitmel Earley: Offers concrete daily and weekly liturgies (mealtimes, bedtime, discipline) to build intentional family rhythm. Good for someone who wants practical, repeatable routines rather than big picture philosophy.
The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work— John Gottman: Research-based principles for a stable marriage, drawn from Gottman's decades of studying couples. Good for a couple wanting an evidence-based approach to strengthening their partnership specifically.
7 Habits of Highly Effective Families — Stephen Covey: Applies Covey's popular seven habits to family life, offering practical tools for building a strong family culture and mission. Good for a family wanting a shared vocabulary and concrete practices for becoming more intentional together.
Aging Parents
Aging is natural and some of us are blessed with long lives and parents who live long lives. That blessing of course comes with it’s own challenges though and we don’t talk enough about how to manage those challenges with grace and without losing sight of the blessing. This category is about navigating that transition with honesty, practical planning, and grace.
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Mom and Dad, We Need to Talk — Cameron Huddleston: A practical guide to having difficult financial and care conversations with aging parents before a crisis forces them. Good for someone unsure how to even start the conversation with parents who resist discussing it.
Between Life and Death — Kathryn Butler, MD: A guide through the complex medical, ethical, and spiritual decisions surrounding serious illness and end-of-life care, offering a compassionate, faith-centered framework from a former ICU physician. It is especially valuable for individuals planning ahead or families facing difficult healthcare decisions who want greater clarity, confidence, and hope.
Making Good Return — Kathleen Nielson: Practical, biblical wisdom for navigating the challenges of caring for aging parents, helping you honor them with grace, compassion, and faithfulness through the later seasons of life. Especially helpful for adult children who are currently caregiving, anticipating future responsibilities, or seeking biblical guidance for making loving and wise decisions as their parents age.
Discerning Your Path, Especially in Life’s Second Half
The first half of life is often laid out for us. It’s about coming into your own sense of self and establishing a way of sustaining yourself. It’s a wonderful thing when young people have the ability and interest to ask the deeper questions, but it’s certainly in life’s second half where we have the wisdom, maturity and opportunity to really create something uniquely true and deeply fulfilling.
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Designing Your Life — Bill Burnett & Dave Evans: Applies design-thinking methods (prototyping, reframing problems) to building a fulfilling life and career. Good for someone who wants a practical, iterative process rather than abstract reflection. Checkout the workbook too!
The Second Mountain — David Brooks: Contrasts self-focused "first mountain" success with a second, commitment-driven season oriented toward others. Good for someone who's achieved conventional success but feels something's still missing.
From Strength to Strength— Arthur Brooks: Uses research on cognitive decline and career trajectories to argue for redefining success in the second half of life. Good for someone fearing professional irrelevance as they age.
Finishing Well — Bob Buford: Profiles people who made the transition to significance well, drawing lessons on what distinguishes them. Good for someone wanting concrete models of others who've made this shift, not just theory.
Legal Affairs
We all have the right intentions and we certainly work to hard to save something to leave behind, but without the right legal structures in place, even loving families can face confusion, conflict, or unnecessary loss when the time comes to act.
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Entrusted: Building a Legacy That Lasts — David R. York & Andrew L. Howell: Lays out an "Entrusted Planning" process that aligns a family's principles and values with their tangible assets, preparing future generations to build a lasting legacy rather than just receive one. Good for a family with meaningful assets who wants to pass down character, purpose, and stewardship alongside, or perhaps even more than, the money itself.
Beyond the Grave — Jeffrey Condon: A guide to how inheritance decisions can unintentionally create family conflict, and how to structure an estate plan to prevent it. Good for a parent worried about sibling conflict or fairness disputes after they're gone.
Splitting Heirs — Ron Blue: A biblically grounded argument for thinking carefully about how inheritance affects children's character, not just their bank accounts. Good for a parent wondering whether leaving significant wealth will help or harm their kids.
Family Trusts — Hartley Goldstone, James E. Hughes Jr, & Keith Whitaker: Written as a guide for families like the Rockefellers with actively managed, large trusts, this book focuses on how to structure and communicate about trusts so they strengthen rather than strain family relationships. Good for a family setting up or already managing a trust who wants to avoid the common relational pitfalls. Not all of the lessons may be relevant, but there’s much that can be gleaned from this read for any family to better setup and manage a trust.
Financial Affairs
Money is a tool for stewardship, not the measure of a life well-lived. This category is about handling finances with wisdom, generosity, and an eye toward what actually matters.
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Good Money: Six Steps to Building a Financial Life with Purpose — John Coleman: Steps back from treating wealth as the ultimate goal and instead presents a six-part framework for using money as a tool to build a life of purpose, impact, and fulfillment. Good for someone who's financially successful but unsatisfied, wanting to move past default "save more, spend less" advice toward a deeper relationship with money.
Die With Zero— Bill Perkins: Makes the case for intentionally spending down wealth during your lifetime to maximize life experiences rather than over-saving for a future you may not reach. Good for someone who over-prioritizes saving and needs permission to actually use their resources now.
The Treasure Principle — Randy Alcorn: A short, faith-based case for generosity as the wisest use of wealth, framed around eternal rather than earthly returns. Good for someone wanting a values or generosity lens on money rather than a technical planning guide.
Reconciling with the Reality of Death
If not for the reality of death, there would be little need for a philosophy of life. It’s a lifelong process reconciling with life’s hardest reality, but doing so frees you up to truly seize the gift that is life.
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On Death — Timothy Keller: A short, direct reflection on mortality from a pastoral perspective, written while Keller himself was facing terminal illness. Good for someone avoiding the topic entirely or looking for a faith-informed lens on it.
On the Shortness of Life — Seneca: The Stoic case that life feels short mainly because people waste it, not because it's actually brief. Good for someone who wants a bracing, philosophical (not religious) angle.
Living Life Backward — David Gibson: Draws on Ecclesiastes to argue that keeping death in view clarifies how to live now. Good for someone who wants a Scripture-based meditation rather than a self-help framework.
When the Game Is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box— John Ortberg: Uses the metaphor of a board game to argue that keeping death in view should reshape how tightly we hold onto possessions, status, and achievement while we're alive. Good for someone who intellectually knows life is short but wants a memorable, everyday framework for actually living that way.
Grief
Grief is a natural part of the human experience. It’s not a problem to solve or a phase to complete. Rather, it's a companion that reshapes how we love and remember. These resources are curated to offer honest companionship for that process, not easy answers.
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How to Say Goodbye — Wendy MacNaughton: An illustrated meditation on presence and loss, drawn from the author's experience sitting with a dying friend. Good for someone who processes best visually or wants a gentler, quieter entry point into grief.
O Love That Will Not Let Me Go — Nancy Guthrie: A collection of reflections on suffering and hope, compiled by a mother who has walked through the deaths of her own children. Good for someone currently in the middle of loss, not just anticipating or studying it.
The View from a Hearse— Joseph Bayly: A classic, unflinching reflection on grief and faith written by a man who buried three of his own children. Good for someone wanting a raw, deeply personal account rather than a general framework.
Good Grief!: Hope, Help, and a little Humor for your Journey from Wife to Widow— Jody Noland: Practical, encouraging guidance for widows navigating the many new challenges of that season, written from Noland's own widowhood and her belief that healing can include laughter. Good for a woman specifically walking through the loss of a spouse who wants a companion that offers both practical help and permission to smile again.
Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy — Sheryl Sandberg & Adam Grant: Combines Sandberg's account of losing her husband suddenly with Grant's research on resilience, offering practical, psychology-based guidance for rebuilding after devastating loss. Good for someone wanting an evidence-based, secular perspective on resilience alongside the more faith-rooted grief resources in this category.
Suffering, Surrender & Self-Care
We can’t avoid suffering in this life. It’s just a guarantee. It also can’t be reasoned away. What’s left to do it have the courage to face it. That’s where we find healing as what’s heavy becomes just ever-so lighter with time and we become wiser, more resilient, and even more free learning how to surrender the illusion of control.
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Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy — Mark Vroegop: Recovers the biblical practice of lament as a faithful response to suffering, rather than a lack of trust in God. Good for someone who feels guilty being honest with God about pain and needs permission to grieve openly.
A Path Through Suffering — Elisabeth Elliot: Reflections on trusting God through hardship, written by a woman who lost her first husband to violence on the mission field.
The Happiness Trap— Russ Harris: A clinically grounded ACT approach to accepting difficult thoughts and emotions rather than fighting them. Good for someone whose suffering is compounded by fighting their own feelings and who wants concrete psychological tools. Check out the illustrated version too.
Calm: A Practical Guide to Mindfulness— Michael Acton Smith: An accessible, secular introduction to mindfulness practices for reducing stress and staying present. Good for someone new to mindfulness who wants a gentle, low-barrier starting point for self-care. We always prefer ink and paper to an app!
Compassion
Showing up for someone rarely requires the perfect words, rather simply presence, humility, and the willingness to sit in discomfort alongside them rather than trying to fix it. This is about learning to move through intention to practicing compassion for the sake of blessing those who matter most.
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There Is No Good Card for This — Kelsey Crowe & Emily McDowell: A practical, often funny guide to showing up for people in crisis without saying the wrong thing or disappearing out of discomfort. Good for someone who wants to support a grieving or struggling friend but, as is common, feels paralyzed by not knowing what to say or do.
Making Good Return: Biblical Wisdom on Honoring Aging Parents— Kathleen B. Nielson: Offers five scriptural truths on aging to shape how we care for aging parents. Good for someone caring for aging parents who wants a biblically grounded framework for approaching that season with humility and hope, rather than just practical caregiving tips.
The Hole in Our Gospel — Richard Stearns: The World Vision CEO's account of confronting the scale of global poverty and suffering, and the Christian call to compassionate action beyond personal comfort. Good for someone whose faith feels privatized and wants to reconnect it to tangible care for others' suffering.
To Bless the Space Between Us — John O'Donohue: A collection of poetic blessings for life's transitions, losses, and thresholds, written from a Celtic (Catholic-mystic) spiritual tradition. Good for someone wanting language, whether spoken or written, to offer someone walking through a hard season. Makes a great case for the practice of extending a blessing.
Finding Joy in Life
Even in seasons marked by loss, joy isn't a betrayal of grief, rather it's evidence that life and hope persist alongside it. This category is a reminder that lightness and delight still have a place, even here.
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That Sounds Fun — Annie F. Downs: An invitation to pursue joy and fun intentionally as a spiritual practice, not a distraction from a meaningful life. Good for someone who's grown so serious or burdened that they've forgotten how to enjoy simple things.
Ordinary Time: Lessons Learned While Staying Put— Annie B. Jones: A memoir about finding meaning, humor, and hope in the quiet, unremarkable rhythms of small-town life rather than chasing bigger or more extraordinary circumstances. Good for someone who feels their ordinary season of life is somehow lacking, and needs permission to find real joy right where they are.
Surprised by Joy— C.S. Lewis: A spiritual memoir tracing Lewis's own journey from atheism to faith through his lifelong pursuit of "Joy" — a specific, piercing longing he came to see as a signpost pointing beyond itself toward God. Good for someone who has felt inexplicable moments of longing or wonder and wants language for what that experience might actually mean.
