Arriving August 4th, 2026, from North Atlantic Books

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  • "An essential guide for every body. Write Yourself Home invites you to fully inhabit the life that's yours, and it does so with creativity, warmth, and clear steps. I highly recommend this book to every single person out there who happens to have a body!”

    —Stephen Cope, author of The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling

  • "The first step to telling the truth - in your life, on the page - is letting yourself hear the truth. Johanna’s practice of embodied writing offers a way to access the truth that lives in the body, beneath other ways of knowing. You won’t find a wiser, more compassionate teacher."

    —Megan Devine, author of It’s OK that You’re Not Ok: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture that Doesn’t Understand

  • "Write Yourself Home is an enthralling, luminous, deeply moving account of a descent into illness and a path back to the body and to allegiance to that body, through language. In her deeply innovative and beautifully curated exercises, Johanna Franzel shows us a way to open up again to life and to hope and joy and full embodiment. Find a cozy chair, because you won’t be able to put this book down.”

    —Susan Conley, author of Landslide

  • “In Write Yourself Home, Johanna Franzel reframes the basic act of writing. This is a writing process that pays a different kind of attention and provokes new form and meaning from the knowledge you carry around with you everywhere. What is truly revelatory is watching Franzel demonstrate, through her own experience, how to use writing to follow the instructions of the body. Then she shows you how! This book is deeply generous, practical and accessible. You will walk away knowing just what to do.”

    – Chana Joffe-Walt, radio journalist and producer at This American Life

  • "For anyone whose body has rewritten their life without permission, Write Yourself Home offers a different way forward. Grounded in somatic awareness and radical permission, this book offers accessible practices for those navigating illness, trauma, grief, or burnout—without pushing, fixing, or bypassing. Designed to be done from bed, from rest, from wherever you are, Franzel helps readers reclaim their own language, agency, and sense of wholeness—without denying pain or demanding recovery. This is not writing to improve yourself, but writing to come home to yourself. Highly recommend."

    – Sarah Ramey, musician & author of The Lady’s Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness

A transformative guide and radical invitation to come home to your body—finding safety, joy, and connection, exactly as you are.

Write Yourself Home offers accessible somatic writing practices to help you connect more deeply to your body, embracing your own unique story and creative genius beyond the boundaries of health, wellness, and ability.

Movement, breathing exercises, parts work, and writing practices designed to help you attune to the joys, pleasures, challenges, and vibrancy of being alive. Preorder from your local independent bookstore.

Photo: Molly Haley

Hi, I’m Johanna.

I developed this practice to help folks like you navigate greater health and creativity without platitudes or simple fixes. By training, I’m a biodynamic craniosacral therapist, a teacher, a writer, and an audio producer. I’m also someone who knows autoimmune disease and the benefits of creative practice. I facilitate spaces where we can listen to what our bodies are actually saying in order to inhabit ourselves more fully. I believe in abundant permission, reverence, and the vitality of creativity. Learn more.

My new book, Write Yourself Home: A Creative Guide for Living Well in the Body You Have Through Embodied Writing and Movement Practice will be available in August 2026 from North Atlantic Books. I can’t wait to share it with you!

Course testimonials

  • “There truly are no words that come close to expressing my gratitude for your infinite love, exquisite skill, and generosity in these offerings to all of us… As a group we are swimming in the sweetness of your invitation to come alive together.” - B.E.

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  • “We may have started out as (mostly) a group of strangers, but the ending felt to me like a unique oneness…Monday nights kept me breathing, I’m betting kept us all breathing (not exactly easy these days) through the bullshark and sadness of what is going on around us. Thank you for continuing to teach me that my body holds my greatest wisdom and that it needs space and attention.  You have changed this 67 year olds life forever and for the better.” - Marcy 

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  • “I did not believe it possible to feel intimate, connected, and present on Zoom until I sat in groups with Johanna Franzel. There is something alchemical in the way she brings us into our bodies, into our here and now, into words that then magically flow from us… Whatever she offers, sign me up.” - Sue Young, Falmouth

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  • “For 30 years I’ve been looking for a practitioner to meet me in these realms. Johanna does. Johanna is host to an extremely rare quality: she allows the question to arrive – whatever it is, how bright, how hidden, how painful. ” — M.H.

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  • “I have worked with Johanna for years and I can feel myself incrementally getting in closer and closer to what is actually happening now in my body as it changes moment to moment..She has ushered me through a few rebellious tantruming months. She is real. She is brilliant. She is grace.” — S.Y.

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  • “A space full of support, permission, courage, and care where we could all show up just as we were in each moment. What an extraordinary gift! … The themes you used to move us through this course feel like guides for moving through life. I want to take the course again right now!” - E.A.

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Discover what happens when you invite your whole self into the room.