The author
Jasen Rockliffe
Jasen Rockliffe wrote Back. To you. from a hospital bed in Oakville, Ontario. The preface is dated from the room he was in: Room 344, ICU.
Most books are written to be understood.
This one was written to be felt.
Why the book exists
His mother has had dementia for fifteen years. It took her memories. It never took her laugh.
Before she was his, she was already somebody’s safe place. She spent seven years as a nun, then years as a geriatric nurse across Oakville, and then ran a small reflexology clinic. She is eighty-nine.
The book is dedicated to her, which is why the name on the cover is the one she gave him. Everyone who knows him, including her, calls him Jay.
What the book is
Fifteen chapters across five acts, for people who are functioning, succeeding on paper even, and still hear something quiet asking for their attention. Each of the first fourteen chapters closes with a practice called a Way Back: small, concrete, under ten minutes, free of jargon.
It is not a system and it makes no promises. It tells a true story, then hands you one thing you can do today. The claims underneath the practices are set out honestly on the science page, including the seven of seventeen that the evidence only weakly supports, and the three that argue against things the wellness industry sells.
Where the money goes
The book pays its own bills, and not one dollar more. Everything after that goes to dementia and Alzheimer’s research, with receipts posted on this site every year, where anyone can read them.
The first printing is five hundred hardcovers, numbered by hand and registered to the name of the person who keeps each one.
Read something first
All fourteen practices are free here, in the book’s own words, with no account and no email.
Way Back No. 1, sixty seconds, the one the book opens with.
The Hold, which keeps a grievance for a day and then asks one question.
The Sit, ten minutes, no counter and nothing to watch.
The workbooks, twenty sheets you can print.
Contact
Press, rights and anything else: book@defusely.com. He reads it himself.