Six weekly video visits, for assisted-living communities
Every life is a story worth keeping.
A trained Companion visits one of your residents by video each week for six weeks and asks about their life. Out of it comes a printed book in their own words, a film in their own voice — and a building where people know who they have been sitting beside.
A conversation.
A chapter.
Something to hold.
Six weeks, one chapter at a time, at whatever pace the resident sets.
-
01
The same Companion, every week.
Six video visits, about half an hour each. An aide carries in the tablet we provide, taps one button, and leaves. The resident has no account, no password, and nothing to learn. Nobody from us is ever in your building.
-
02
One chapter of a life at a time.
Childhood, work, marriage, the hard years, what matters most. Photographs the family sends appear on screen as they talk. Every visit goes at the resident’s pace, and ends early when energy fades.
-
03
Something to hold.
A printed hardcover of their stories with the family’s photographs, and an archive their family keeps for good. Families receive short clips along the way. At the end, your community hosts an afternoon: the film is screened in your building, and the resident signs copies of their own book.
And stories that continue
into the future.
Not a folder of files. Their parent, still talking, for years.
The archive. Every chapter, every story and every photograph, kept and downloadable in ordinary formats at any time. The complete recording of every visit is theirs too.
Stories that arrive on their own. Short clips of one story at a time — ninety seconds of their mother explaining how they got their name, landing on a Tuesday in March when nobody was thinking about any of this.
Messages their parent recorded for people by name, held and delivered on the days that matter: a birthday, a wedding, a Christmas they may not be there for. Nobody in the family has to remember, and nothing depends on anyone still being the person who does this in twenty years.
Their story.
Their choice.
- Nothing is recorded without written consent from the resident or their legal representative. The software will not start without it.
- A resident can pass any question, keep a story private, pause a visit, or stop the recording. Always, and without explanation.
- Nobody from us is ever in your building, and nothing we hold comes from the chart.
- A person reviews every chapter and clip before anyone sees it.
- Your residents’ stories are never sold and never used to train AI. Family photographs are never altered, and any painted scene is labelled as an artistic recreation.
From the founder
“The most irreplaceable thing a family owns is a voice, and the stories only that voice can tell.”
Steven Rigby, founder. He built DearFamily Archive after losing his mother, and her stories, in the same year, and made the first book and film himself.
Tell us about your community.
We are beginning with a small number of communities in Idaho that care about their residents’ stories.
Write to Steve, and he will come and talk it through.
steve@dearfamilyarchive.com
It helps if you tell us: your community and town · your role · roughly how many residents.