You know something.
Share it, and the story it came from.
A community of our collective truth
The Great Bear
In the old Greek story, a mother named Callisto was turned into a bear. Her son grew up without her. Years later they met again, and he didn't know who she was.
So they would never lose each other again, they were lifted into the sky together. She became the Great Bear, the Big Dipper. He became the Little Bear, the Little Dipper. They have been side by side ever since.
Every night, the two circle the North Star together. She doesn't lead him, and she doesn't leave him. She moves beside him, the whole way round.
That is what the Book of Us is to the Book of You. Not a guide out in front, telling you where to go, but one who walks beside you. Every truth here was shared by someone finding their own way. Listen, keep what is yours, and leave the rest. You are the one who finds your way home.
Side by side, the whole way. It is all of ours.
Your truth walks with ours.
This book grows one connection at a time. Choose someone you think might have a truth worth adding, or invite up to 12 at a time to help the web expand.
Sent from you, by name, so it feels like you, not a company. If someone hasn't shared their truth within 48 hours, we'll check in with you, so you can pass it to someone else and keep the chain moving.
Send to up to 12 people at a time, to help expand the web.
Written one voice at a time, by one thousand souls, and counting.
Our mission is to give people a place to share what they know is true, and the stories it came from, and to discover they're not alone in knowing it.
The Book of You is about you. The Book of Us is about all of us.
If you're here, there's something you already know. Something that came through you, not from anyone else. You don't need a title or a following to carry it. What matters is that it's true, and it's yours. And if you have forgotten what you know, someone else's story may be what brings it back.
Click any circle to read more
Someone once asked when this started. I said six years ago, when I began the deeper work on myself. Sitting with that answer, I realized it wasn't quite right. This started long before that. Probably at birth.
I came into a family that struggled to live in truth. Love was there, but it was complicated. Presence and honesty were hard to find. So I grew up searching for something I didn't have a name for yet. There were iterations throughout my life where something like this tried to emerge, moments of real love and presence, real connection, work that felt meaningful. Then fear would show up, challenges would arrive, and I'd forget. The spiral would return me to the same themes, at a deeper level each time. That's how healing actually works, not a straight line, a spiral.
For most of my life, I believed the story I was given, about who I was, what I was capable of, what was wrong with me. I wasn't broken. I was programmed. What I've come to understand since is that truth isn't fixed, it evolves as you do. The more I let go of what was supposed to be true, other people's version of me, and found what was actually true for me, the more truth I could access. It compounded. Each layer I was honest about opened the next one. There was plenty I was afraid to look at, but the more I actually sought truth, and took care of myself through the process instead of rushing it, the more my life genuinely changed. I found practices along the way that brought me back to presence, back to myself, again and again, whenever I drifted.
Another reason I built this: when you're genuinely open to the world, when you believe things are happening for you instead of to you, you start looking at people with curiosity instead of judgment. And when someone shares their truth with you, whether you can actually receive it depends entirely on where you are. I've had many people in my life offer me something true, and sometimes I was too defensive to hear it. Other times it changed everything on the spot. And sometimes, someone said something I couldn't take in at the time, and it sat there for years before it suddenly made sense. That's part of what this book is too. As you evolve, truths you couldn't understand before start to land. This is a place to listen to what resonates in what others have found, and to offer your own, because we help each other by doing both, sharing and listening, in whatever order life gives it to you.
I think of this a little like religion, minus the dogma. Many different paths, but eventually they all seem to lead to the same place, which I believe is home. Love. Unconditional love, for yourself and for the world. This book offers many paths, many doors. Take the ones that call to you, and close the ones that don't. Everything here exists for you.
The work evolved through building community. Through years spent building things in the world, and the realization that what I was really building was never the thing itself. Through friendships across different places, different cultures, different ways of seeing. Through every experience that forced the question: who am I, really? What is this life actually for?
I want to be honest about something. Along the way, I've done things I'm not proud of. I've hurt people. And they say hurt people hurt people. That's true. Which is why this work begins with the one thing that's most available to all of us: turning inward. Looking at ourselves. Finding our own truth. When we do that, when we shift our own vibration by doing the actual work of knowing ourselves, it emits outward. People feel it. Relationships change. The world responds differently.
This isn't a success story. It's a story of suffering, ridicule, rejection, and a long road back to love. I've known what it feels like not to be loved. To be disrespected. Written off. And I've also known the opposite, what it feels like to be at the top of the mountain. From that vantage point, the only thing that ever made sense was this: when you're there, your responsibility is to bring the people at the bottom up with you. Because at some level, they are you.
I suffered deeply. I don't want to see anyone else suffer that way if I can help it. I think we're ultimately here to help each other, to share what we actually know. This is what I've learned. This is what I know. Different people, completely different lives, keep unearthing the same truths, in their own words, and it makes them feel something specific: relief. Oh, there are others like me. That overlap doesn't belong to me. It belongs to everyone. So I wanted to build something that could hold it.
We talk a lot about diversity, and diversity is real and beautiful. But in focusing on our differences, we sometimes forget our similarities, and it's the similarities that make us feel less alone. This book exists to show that. Not mine. Ours.
I hope some of this resonates, not because it's my story specifically, but because it might be yours too. That's really the whole point. We're not so different underneath it, and I'd rather you feel that than know my name.
"We're all just walking each other home."
— Ram Dass
A thousand people, then ten thousand, then more. Every truth shared becomes part of something bigger than any one of us.
Not sure yet what your truth is? Find Your Truth walks you through our tools and process for uncovering what's true for you.
A book written by all of us, one truth at a time. Not a feed, not a forum, not a collection of quotes. A place where what people know is true is kept, read, and carried forward, to show that underneath everything that makes us different, we keep arriving at the same things. The Book of You is about you. The Book of Us is about all of us.
The pairing is the whole discipline. A line on its own is a quote, and quotes are everywhere. What it means to you is what makes it yours, and what makes it land for someone else.
Why we ask how it arrived. The story is the door. Someone reading your truth may not be ready for the truth itself, but they may recognise the walk, the conversation, the loss, or the morning it came through. That is often how a truth finds the next person.
The areas of life are the same ones the Book of You uses, so a truth shared here and a truth someone is working on there speak the same language.
The book only means something if it's real. A thousand invented truths would prove nothing. A thousand real people, from lives nothing alike, saying the same thing in their own words, proves something.
Why we ask a little more about you. Age, where you live, where you were born, your background. Every one of these is optional, and they exist for one reason: to show the same truth arriving from very different lives. That overlap is the point of the whole book.
Everyone who shares is 18 or older. A truth you heard from your child is welcome, shared by you, on their behalf.
We talk a lot about diversity, and it is real and beautiful. But in focusing on our differences we can forget our similarities, and it's the similarities that make us feel less alone.
So no truth here is weighted by who said it. It is weighted by whether it is true for you when you read it.
Whether a truth lands depends on where you are. Some will resonate immediately. Some won't, and that's not a flaw, that's the book working correctly. And sometimes one sits with you for years before it suddenly makes sense.
Receiving is a practice too. Truth comes in layers. We can only take in what we are able to see right now. Take what resonates, leave what doesn't, and come back. As you change, truths you couldn't hear before start to arrive.
This book grows one connection at a time, and the people most likely to share a truth are the people who were asked by someone they trust.
If someone you invited hasn't shared within 48 hours, we'll check in with you, so you can pass it to someone else or give them a nudge yourself.
It's a living document, not a fixed text. Every edition reflects what has come in since the last one.
Held in balance. If one group sharing one belief arrived all at once, the book could start to speak for that view alone. For the published editions, we curate for balance, so the book stays a book of us, not a book of some of us.
Honest about who it reaches. Right now this reaches people with internet access, in the languages we support. Every page can be read in more than thirty languages, and we'll keep widening that as it grows.
The Book of You is where the personal work happens: finding your truth, alone, with a guide, or with others. The Book of Us is where it is shared, reflected on, and lived in community. They overlap more than they separate, often the same people, sometimes the same room. See Community & Events.
This isn't guru wisdom, and it isn't a decree. Nobody here is saying this is the truth and you must follow it.
This isn't a debate. Truths aren't argued with here. You take what resonates, and leave the rest.
This isn't anyone's platform. No names in lights, no hierarchy.
This isn't therapy, and it isn't built to hold a crisis. If something here brings up more than you can carry, please reach out to a licensed professional.
A thousand people, then ten thousand, then more. Every truth shared becomes part of something bigger than any one of us.
One of the quickest ways to remember is to hear it from someone else. A stranger, from a life nothing like yours, writes down the thing you were sure only you felt, and something loosens. You were never the only one, and nothing was wrong with you for feeling it.
Our MissionTo give people a place to share what they know is true, and the story of how they came to know it, and to discover they're not alone in knowing it. We gather those truths and stories, one voice at a time, into a living book anyone can read, to show that underneath, what we share is love.
A world where people live as their whole selves, and see in each other’s truths that we are all saying the same thing from different backgrounds.
Curiosity · Safety · Love and acceptance · Patience · Oneness
Click any circle to read more
We hold no truth of our own. We're not here to tell anyone what's true. We're here to make sure what people know doesn't have to be known alone.
We all come from the same root, and life grows us into different branches. No branch is better or worse. So when a truth arrives in your words and the same truth arrives in a stranger's, in another language, from another faith, it isn't a coincidence. It is the root showing through.
Backed through time. This isn't a new idea. It shows up in Advaita Vedanta's teaching that separateness is a kind of forgetting, in Buddhism's teaching that all things are interconnected, in Kabbalah, in Christian and Jewish mysticism, and in Indigenous traditions worldwide. The words change. The pattern doesn't.
Truth comes in layers. We can only receive the truth we are able to see right now. A truth that means nothing to you today may be the one you need next year. Nothing here asks you to believe it. Look through the lens that fits.
Judgment of another is judgment of self. When someone's truth sits badly with you, that is worth noticing too. Sometimes the truth we push away hardest is the one closest to our own.
Share what you know is true, or come and receive what others have found.
This book only works if it reaches a thousand people, then more. Invite five people you think might have a truth worth adding.
This is the message your friends will receive:
Hey [Friend's Name],
I recently found something I think you'd genuinely connect with. It's called The Book of Us, a book being built entirely from real truths, submitted by everyday people, no gurus, no influencers, just what people have actually lived and come to know for themselves.
I thought of you because I think you have something worth adding.
You submit one truth and a few lines on what it means to you. As it grows, 1,000 people, then 10,000, then more, new editions get published, and everyone who's part of it becomes a Co-Author, with a free copy of their own.
If you're interested or want to learn more, check out the website. They're also building community around it, locally and online.
https://bookofus.co
Regards,
[Sender's Name]
We're building two communities, online and in person, the Book of You community, and the Book of Us community. The Book of You community is about doing our own work, taking our journey, individually, or relationally with a guide, together in community. The Book of Us community is about sharing our truth, our shared experiences, and what we want to do with it. These two overlap more than they separate, often the same people, sometimes the same room. What differs is the intention. One is about the journey itself. The other is about integration and reflection, done together, in community. Both matter. Some things we want to work through on our own. Some things benefit from a small group. And some things need the whole world in the room.
The Book of You community is where the work happens, individually and collectively. Sometimes that looks like a journey with a guide. Sometimes that looks like a journey on your own. Sometimes it looks like a journey with a guide in a dyad, just the two of you. And sometimes it looks like a journey with the entire group, walking the same six steps side by side, then reflecting collectively, even though what surfaces is entirely your own. Sometimes it's virtual, a shared online journey with people you may never meet in person. We offer a range of modalities for this, meditation journeys, relational journeys, nature journeys, and more, supporting you from something easy going all the way to something that goes really deep in the journey. There's a multitude of other experiences too, which you can find on our Book of You page. Support makes the work easier. It doesn't make it less yours.
The Book of Us community is different in focus. This is where we gather around shared truths, and shared experience, discussing the themes that keep showing up, what they mean for how we live, and what we want to build together because of them. It's not only about the truth itself, it's about being in it with other people.
These gatherings tend to organize around the different areas of life a truth touches. A business-focused group starts to function like a mastermind. Others center on family, on finance, on spiritual growth, on the body, wherever people find themselves reaching for the same layer of life at the same time. Different rooms, same underlying work.
Right now, our in-person community is based in Philadelphia, along the Schuylkill River, in a space curated specifically for this kind of gathering. Our virtual community is open from anywhere, starting in English.
A journey is any experience entered with intention, a beginning, a passage through something, and a return. That structure is ancient. Long before the word existed, humans were doing this, in trance, in prayer, on pilgrimage, alone in nature. What's changed over time is the container. What's stayed the same is the shape.
The oldest evidence we have points to shamanic practice, tens of thousands of years old, found independently in cultures with no contact with each other, Siberia, the Amazon, parts of Africa, the Americas. The pattern was remarkably consistent: enter an altered state deliberately, often through drumming, fasting, or ritual, travel somewhere beyond ordinary reality, and come back with something, healing, guidance, a part of yourself that had gone missing.
Nearly every culture built its own version of this. Vision quests. Pilgrimage, physical travel toward something sacred, still walked today toward Mecca, Santiago, Varanasi, Jerusalem. Rites of passage, the structure anthropologists describe in three parts: leaving ordinary life, a threshold period where you're between who you were and who you're becoming, and a return, changed.
So when we use the word journey, we're not claiming something new. We're pointing at something old enough to predate language, dressed in whatever container fits the moment, a walk, a conversation, a sitting practice, a room full of people. What makes something a journey isn't the method. It's the intention, and the willingness to be changed by what you find.
How we journey to find our truth. Finding a truth is one thing. Living it is another. Every journey we offer, however different they look on the surface, moves through the same six steps.
These six steps can happen individually, relationally with one other person, or collectively in a group. However you walk it, the six steps themselves always stay the same.
If you want to learn more about the different ways to journey:
Visit the Book of YouIn person in Philadelphia, and online from anywhere, a chance to share your truth and connect with others doing the same.
An evening along the Schuylkill River, sharing truths out loud in community, some already written, some discovered in the room.
RSVPA themed conversation, open to anyone, anywhere. Come with a truth to share, or just come to listen.
RSVPA small group gathering for truths that showed up through business and work, structured like a mastermind, held like a circle.
RSVPThis is a placeholder format, real dates and details will replace these once the calendar is live.
Share your truth, and you'll be the first to know when we're gathering next, in person or online.
Start by choosing a category, then narrow by how it arrived, then a keyword if you like.
Click on the circle to expand it and read the full story.
Many of these truths will not be yours. The world is a big place, and that is exactly where agency comes in.
Sit with something. Reflect on it. Ask not do I think this, but do I feel it. Is it something I embody, or something I want to? What we embody, we know. What we want to integrate, we learn.
And sometimes you go after a truth and find it was never yours. That is part of the experience of life too.
A return to yourself.
Some of us already carry pieces of our truth. Some of us are still looking, still trying to find what's true for us, and that's exactly what this is for. The Book of You is where you go deeper, tools and practices to help uncover what's true for you, or keep unpacking the layers once you have, who am I, why am I here, how do I live a life that actually feels true. Truth isn't fixed, it keeps evolving as we do. This is a living document for that, a place to hold what you're remembering, see how far you've come, and keep going.
We call this practice Journey Work, a framework for going deeper into those questions, one layer at a time. There's no single right way to do it. Some of it happens alone. Some with a guide's support. Some in community, with a partner, a child, a business, a group of friends doing this alongside you. The framework underneath stays the same six steps, whether you're walking it by yourself or with others.
What you build is entirely yours, a bespoke record of your own truth, kept for you. Some of what you find, you'll want to hold close. Some of it, you may want to share, because truth doesn't only arrive through us. Sometimes it arrives through someone else's words, landing in a way that feels like your own. When that happens, it's worth noticing, that's the sense of oneness this whole project points toward, someone else's truth resonating like it was always yours too.
Depending on where you are in your own unfolding, someone else's truth might be exactly what opens your next layer. That's part of why the Book of You and the Book of Us are connected, not the same thing, but not separate either. The Book of You is where you find what's true for you. The Book of Us is where you discover it was never only yours.
Leads to the separate Book of You site
Journey Work is the framework underneath the Book of You, six steps, preparation, intention, the journey itself, sitting with it, a plan, and integration, whether you walk it alone, with a guide, or with others.
That framework takes different shapes depending on where you are, a nature journey, a meditation, a conversation, an everyday moment, a couples practice, a collage. Different doors into the same six steps.
Takes you to the full breakdown of every journey type on the Book of You site