Write the River: A Companion Journal to A River Runs Through Us

Write the River is a companion journal to A River Runs Through Us, created for readers who want to explore their own stories through honest reflection and healing-centered writing.

The memoir tells one woman's story of the places where life breaks open—and the ways God meets us there. This companion journal invites you to pause and consider your own story: the experiences, relationships, losses, beliefs, wounds, and moments of grace that have shaped who you are.

Through thoughtful prompts and gentle guidance, you'll explore themes of grief, identity, motherhood, exhaustion, shame, resilience, faith, self-forgiveness, and emotional healing. The goal isn't polished writing. It is truth-telling—giving yourself permission to write honestly about what happened, what you believed about yourself because of it, and what you might be ready to see differently now.

Used alongside A River Runs Through Us or on its own, Write the River offers a quiet place to reflect, remember, grieve, question, forgive, and begin to understand the threads running through your own life.

Your story matters. Your memories matter. Your life is still being written.

Michelle Thooft is a writer, English instructor, and speaker whose work grows out of lived experience - crisis pregnancy and adoption, motherhood, ministry, illness, estrangement, and the slow work of forgiveness. She is the author of the memoir A River Runs Through Us and its companion journal Write the River. She lives on Minnesota's Iron Range with her husband, where the glorious summers make the winters worth it.