It’s ready for you.

Growing up as an immigrant with parents who left everything behind time and time again, I’ve seen with my own eyes that all can be burned down to start anew.

What I’ve also witnessed is that the FOMO, restlessness, and disappointment we’re trying to escape always come along for the ride.

Come along with me on a different kind of journey, not to a new destination, but planting your feet more firmly right where you find yourself now.

Here pushes back against our age of constant reinvention and the cultural message that we should do whatever it takes to get where we want to go. Instead, its message is the opposite: stay. Stay right here and cultivate the immense potential and beauty that lies within your current circumstances.

Braiding personal narrative and spiritual reflection, Here inspires readers to both embrace and transform their circumstances through commitment and stability—in order that they might find true contentment right where they are.

A special feature of the book are reflection questions at the end of each chapter to actively engage with the ideas of the book or to use with groups. 

Who am I?

Hi! I’m so glad you’re here. I’m Lydia Sohn, a minister and writer whose essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Christian Century, and more.

One of my very first essays, “What Do 90-Somethings Regret Most” was read and circulated almost one million times.

I’m a graduate of Yale Divinity School, where I fell in love with husband, James, and deepened my interest in contemplative theology and mystical spirituality that informs much of my work now. So many of us point to our external circumstances as the causes of both our contentment and discontentment when the little known gem of wisdom I steadily discovered is that it works the other way around: that we hold the power and tools to transform our circumstances from the inside out.

All of this is shared with you in my book, Here: A Spirituality of Staying in a Culture of Leaving.

When I’m not pastoring a church, I’m usually writing or spending time with my family in my beloved hometown of Claremont, California.