Wisdom Has a Voice is a women’s memoir project begun in 2007.
When our mothers pass away, we often discover in their absence the deep influence they had on our lives. How much better to know the real legacy of our mothers earlier in our lives, while our mothers are still with us. When we probe our memories for key events with mother, we often find surprising stories that, upon reflection, reveal amazing truths.
What was mother really trying to tell us? Sometimes she spoke in actions and not words. Let’s find out and share the wisdom of our mothers and of ourselves!
The Wisdom project offers workshops, an anthology, and opportunities to produce audio and video segments.
Kate Farrell, founder of the Wisdom project, is a graduate of the School of Library and Information Studies, UC Berkeley. She has been a language arts classroom teacher (pre-school and grades kindergarten through 12th), author, librarian, university lecturer, and storyteller in Northern California since 1966. She founded the Word Weaving Project, funded by grants from Zellerbach Family Fund, San Francisco, 1979-1991, based on her experience with storytelling and her belief in it, to encourage educators at all levels to learn and enjoy the art.
She is co-author of a monograph, Effects of Storytelling: An Ancient Art for Modern Classrooms, 1982; author of Word Weaving: A Teaching Sourcebook, 1984; producer and co-author of a training videotape, “Word Weaving: The Art of Storytelling,” 1983, distributed by the University of California, Berkeley; and author of the professional book, Storytelling: A Guide for Teachers, Scholastic, 1991. She is also senior author of Storytelling in Our Multicultural World, an oral language development program for early childhood education, published by Zaner-Bloser Educational Publishers, 1994.
Her newest publication, Girl in the Mirror, is a young adult novel, Unlimited Publishing, 2009. Currently she is a part-time school librarian in San Francisco and lives in Santa Rosa, California. She is the mother of a son who lives in the City.
Lynn Henriksen
Lynn Henriksen, workshop leader for the Wisdom project, discovered a profound way to keep our mothers’ spirits alive, after witnessing Alzheimer’s disease ravage her mother’s mind. She has helped hundreds capture in brief memoirs the memories and feelings they never thought they could record. While writing and collecting stories is Lynn’s aim, teaching and encouraging others to portray their mothers’ essential character in a story, as no photograph could ever do, brings her great satisfaction. For fun and to further promote writing these vital bio-vignettes, she created an easy-to-follow guide book, Give the Gift of Story, TellTale Souls’ Essential Guide: Tap Memory and Write Memoir in Five Acts. After a decade of coaching and teaching, she has emerged as The Story Woman™. (Click to purchase “How To” Guide Book)
She is also the author of the book, TellTale Souls…Keeping Spirits Alive One Story at a Time. She is a member of California Writers Club and past President of the San Francisco Chapter of the Women’s National Book Association, an organization with ten chapters and over 800 members. An alumna of Dominican University and a member of the Psi Chi Chapter of the National Honor Society in Psychology, Lynn’s career has been rich and varied as an entrepreneur, founder of a non-profit institute, neurofeedback therapist, instructor, and project manager for the renovation of historic hotel properties.
She’s the mother of a son and two daughters, the proud grandmother of two “adorables,” and lives with her husband in Marin County overlooking San Francisco Bay.
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