How can we grant our precious time its highest value? One of the ways is by creating something that will last!

How can we leave something for our children and grandchildren, and even for our great, great, great grandchildren whom we shall never meet? We can write. We can preserve our lives. Lisa-Catherine believes it is you, the elders, who hold the wisdom this world and the future so desperately needs.

As a writer herself, Lisa-Catherine will tell you that writing, expressing oneself in words:

• is a way to leave your mark on the world and grant a priceless legacy to your family. (This way, you can actually speak at your newborn great-grandchild’s wedding!)

• grants new clarity, sheds new light on who you are and on everything you’ve experienced.

• gives expression to what is inside you, which is both a big relief and totally empowering.

• can heal; the mere act of writing, expressing the content of the written work to oneself, and sharing the product with others are all healing.

• is like finding all the puzzle pieces you thought you’d lost and placing them into the big picture.

• is really fun—nothing like schoolwork!—often profound, and always rewarding.

• is different from delivering an oral history on video (which does have its merits) because it delves deeper. You can multiply the benefits by working with a trained professional by yourself or in a group setting!

 

Guided Autobiography ™
A 14-week course that will help you write your memoirs,
The Birren Method

“Almost every other culture venerates its elders listens to its elders and reveres them in a way that ours, at our loss, does not.” — Lisa-Catherine Cohen.


I used to listen with that veneration to my grandmother, Bessie. Our conversations were so precious to me and now I am deeply grateful that I have her diaries to read and reread. I truly cherish them. I have learned things from them that I don’t think anyone else could have taught me, because of the bond and the respect we shared. From her written legacy and from her life, I have learned the stories of her early years and, for a moment, I can glimpse a wonderfully slower-paced and more cordial, more romantic time. I can experience it only through hearing these stories captured from the past. I am trying to learn from you, my elders, something you have learned that my generation and the ones after me seem to have forgotten: what love means.


I can see, through my baby-boomer’s eyes, that our “golden years” are another completely new chapter of life, indeed the richest and the most worthy of examination! This portion of our lives—an entire second lifetime, in fact, that didn’t even exist until the latter part of the twentieth century—can be as dynamic and creative as we want it to be!


You all have important stories to tell. Your lives span the most dramatic changes that humanity has ever witnessed in one century! You have a legacy to leave to your families, to all of us, and to the future. Though it is wonderful to work on your life stories on your own, or to sit down in front of a video camera and tell an “oral history,” something else, something most profound, happens when you are working within a group or with a trained professional. Those circumstances trigger forgotten memories and never-discovered insights. The process of writing and of sharing stories is empowering, rewarding, healing. Often, some painful event from your past is transformed into something you can look back on and laugh about. If you once thought writing was difficult, working with a professional transforms the process into fun. Always, writing the story of your life is like searching for buried treasure... and finding it!


Lisa-Catherine Cohen, a professional writer and biographer, studied with Dr. James E. Birren, the “Father of Gerontology in North America” who, thirty ago, coined the phrase, “Guided Autobiography™.” Lisa-Catherine uses a series of categories and questions that give her clients a framework within which to organize the otherwise overwhelming amount of material and experience they have accrued in their lives. When they add the photographs and memorabilia that go with their written autobiographies, clients produce records that their descendents cherish forever.


For those interested in beginning this most worthwhile pursuit, Lisa-Catherine offers a course in Guided Autobiography™ that meets weekly for 14 weeks. If participants desire it, the course can become ongoing.


Lisa-Catherine also works with people one-on-one as a “personal historian” and biographer. Scroll on, enjoy this Web site, and read more about and by Lisa-Catherine. She’s a dynamic personality and an entertaining speaker. And she’s passionate in her beliefs about Guided Autobiography™. When Lisa-Catherine gives a talk or facilitates a group, the result is intriguing, profound, inspirational, motivational, and funny. Try one and see for yourself!

Guided Autobiography™
Recommendation Letters
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