From Rachel Havekost — Seattle-based writer, mental health advocate, M.S. in psychology, and bestselling author of Where the River Flows, The Inner Child Journal, The Self-Healer's Journal, and The Grief Workbook. She has attended Harvard's first Mental Health Creator's Summit, given keynotes at the 988 Global Crisis Conference in Amsterdam, and received praise from New York Times mental health journalist Ellen Barry for her memoir. Her combined social media following of 300,000+ (@rachelhavekost on TikTok, @rachel_havekost on Instagram) is a community built specifically around destigmatizing mental health with radical transparency. After 19+ years of therapy, Havekost writes not from the other side of suffering but from inside it — and that is precisely what makes her voice different.
Look Up is a poetry collection and set of short love notes organized as a map — not a how-to, not a workbook, not a guide with steps. A hand to hold while you find your own way through. It is divided into seven sections, each named for a stage of the journey and written with a specific reading instruction so you can find exactly where you are:
Holding On — Read this when you feel stuck or trapped or unable to see what's next. When all you want is to go back in time. Read this when it's time to begin again.
Opening the Heart — Read this when you know it's time to move on, even if it hurts. Even if you still love what's lost. Read this when you're letting go.
Roaming Free — Read this when you feel lost in life. When nothing is certain and all that's familiar is behind you. Read this when you've finally let go.
Integrating — Read this when you're starting to know yourself. When you're learning what it means to be free. Read this when you're becoming you.
Zooming Out — Read this when you've healed or recovered or done the work and you're ready to test your new wings.
Opening the Mind — Read this when you doubt yourself. When old voices creep in. When you wonder if all that work was for nothing. Read this when life is testing everything you've worked for.
Navigating Forward — Read this when you're at the end of things. When your heart breaks again. Read this when something is over.
The central promise of this book — its real argument — is a single sentence: This is not who you are. It's something you're going through.
Perfect for:
- Anyone currently navigating grief, loss, divorce, recovery, or a major life transition who needs something that meets them at the exact emotional stage they're in — the seven-section structure means you can open to the right chapter without having to read the whole book first
- Readers already in Havekost's ecosystem — fans of Where the River Flows, users of The Self-Healer's Journal or The Grief Workbook — who want her voice in a more lyrical, less structured form
- The BookTok mental health community (@rachelhavekost, 264K TikTok followers) who know her work and are looking for the poetry collection that comes from that same voice
- Anyone who has been in therapy and found that sometimes a poem lands where a session didn't — who wants encouragement written by someone with genuine clinical understanding of what they're experiencing and genuine lived experience of having experienced it
- Gift buyers looking for something to give someone who is in the hard middle of grief, divorce, recovery, or change — not a workbook, not a self-help framework, but something tender that says you are not alone in this and this is not the end of you
A Thought Catalog Books imprint.
This listing is for the international edition, printed internationally and fulfilled by Amazon in select countries.
