We document elderwomen who live ordinary lives in extraordinary ways to illuminate their everyday wisdom as we reclaim a culture of human connection. As we face an era of a loneliness epidemic, we turn to listening to the matriarchs who have raised families, nurtured careers, and built communities. Their wisdom of human connection and the human experience has real power to heal generations facing the health, social, and economic risks of social isolation.
The women are typically in their 80s, 90s, and 100s, but we’ve been happy to document younger elder women in their 70s as well. They are mothers, community and business leaders, sisters, doctors, academics, artists, farmers, healers, gardeners, grandmothers, aunties, friends, inventors, activists, volunteers, historians, and women with experiential wisdom that is unquantifiable.
They often don’t know it, but their stories and their voices heal deep wounds of isolation and sorrow. Their joys, losses, triumphs, and humility are the medicine we are all looking for. We listen deeply. And tell their stories.
We document our elderwomen to create Living Anthologies of books, photographs, audio stories (podcasts), and documentary films for families and communities to see them in a new light. Our Living Anthologies weave together their particular stories to help us understand our universal experiences. When we see the women’s gestures and hear the rhythms in their voices, we know we are not alone in life’s vicissitudes.
We are creating a library for families, communities, and the world that is multi-sensory.
Wisdom Anthologies documents women all over the world. We are invested in the value of various perspectives that evolve with each generation.
We reclaim a culture of elderhood as we help families and communities reintegrate the elderwomen and their stories into their own narratives. Human connection is the medicine for a generation facing a loneliness epidemic.
Wisdom Anthologies explores and reveals the thresholds of the feminine archetypes, the Heroine’s Journey, through maiden, mother, and matriarch. At each phase, a soul must cross a threshold. From maiden to mother to matriarch. What happens at the threshold? What happens at those spaces between where one archetype dies and gives life to the next?
Wisdom Anthologies documents the lives, knowledge, and insight of women who have evolved into the Matriarch phase of living. Their perspective can heal families and communities when we practice deep listening and witness the ordinary rhythms that they understand are really quite extraordinary.
We capture the particulars and the universals of their journeys to create a landscape of feminine wisdom that weaves together the beauties and complexities of the human existence. Through documentation, storytelling, and ritual the generations find each other.
Founder and Creative Director Anne Marie Vivienne searches for women all over the world with different backgrounds, perspectives, experiences, and philosophies to document. Some women are eager to talk, to be heard, and to be seen; others feel like they’ve done “nothing important,” and take some convincing to join the conversation.
Anne Marie records, photographs, films, and writes about the women. It’s slow work for one artist, and Anne Marie hires a team of creative experts and translators to join a project when donations are adequate.
Wisdom Anthologies is a 501(c)3 - which means you can donate to our organization with the benefit of a tax write-off.
We depend upon donations from people who believe in the value of our elderwomen and reclaiming a culture of elderhood in order to restore human connection in an era of social isolation and loneliness.
Thank you for all of your support. It means the world to us and to our elderwomen.
