BEGIN YOUR BOOK OF WISDOM
Excavating Wisdom
MEET THE PRACTICE. SET UP YOUR BOOK. PREPARE TO EXCAVATE.
BEGIN TODAY
STUDIO PRACTICE
THE PRACTICE ITSELF
FREE
You already have what you need.
The second half of life. Decades of stories. Hard-won wisdom. Moments that shaped you—the ones you talk about, and the ones you’ve never told anyone.
This isn’t about learning to paint or becoming an artist. It’s about excavating what’s already inside you and bringing it into form on the page.
Excavating Wisdom unfolds in three movements. First, you’ll meet the practice — what Visual Wisdom Keeping is, what excavating means in the studio, what the practice asks of the woman who wants to step into it.
Then you’ll set up your book and meet it — turning inward and returning with something for your page.
And you’ll prepare to excavate, leaving ready to step into your first Wisdom Map. No artistic experience needed. Just willingness to show up.
Why This Work. Why You.
You already save things. Written journals filled and half-filled. Photographs in albums, in boxes, on your phone. Artwork you can’t quite throw away. Empty books you’ve bound or bought, still waiting. Scraps of paper, ribbon, ephemera you picked up without knowing why. None of this is random. You’ve been saving wisdom — your own — even if you couldn’t have called it that.
All this saving has been moving somewhere. You’ve been creating without needing to know where it was going. Something draws you to these particular photographs, these specific scraps, these pages. You’ve trusted it without knowing why. What you’re moving toward doesn’t fit in a sentence — it’s too deep, too layered for that. But it can find form on the page.
There are questions about what you’ve saved. You may have already heard them. How do I begin to fill the blank pages of this cherished book? Why this photograph and not another? What does this page need that I can’t yet see? What wants to be remembered, and what is ready to be expressed? These aren’t questions you can think your way through. They get answered in the doing — in your hands, on the page.
Visual Wisdom Keeping is how you turn lived experience into integrated wisdom. Symbol, image, metaphor — these were our first languages, before we had spoken ones. The practice draws on all of them, alongside word, object, and landscape, to deepen what you know inside and bring it into form, through words and beyond them. You work one layer at a time. You let an image settle into the page as it takes shape. You step back and see what you’ve made — creating with compassion, listening with your eyes. This isn’t saving anymore. This is an excavation.
This isn’t a project you finish. It’s a practice — image by image, spread by spread, season by season. It starts here, and it grows with you.
Welcome to the Studio
Most online programs work one of two ways: video lessons to watch in order, or PDFs to download and print. Visual Wisdom Keeping doesn’t.
It’s published on our Studio Platform — providing interactive elements, reading, video, audio, and reflection woven into the page where they belong. You scroll the way you’d read a book. No modules to check off. No lessons to complete in sequence.
The platform reads the same on your phone, your tablet, your desktop. You can return to a page in the morning, on a break, in bed. The practice doesn’t ask you to schedule it. It asks you to inhabit it.
This is the home of every Visual Wisdom Keeping program. Once you learn the rhythm here, you’ll move through any of them as if you’d always known the way.
Everything You Need to Begin
The orientation, the rhythm, and one excavation in your own hands.
Meet the Practice
Set Up Your Book
Prepare to Excavate
A Self-Paced Studio
The Wisdom in You
Embodied Wisdom
This Work is For You If...
- You want to engage the wisdom of your life — not just think about it, but excavate it.
- You've been saving materials for a long time, and you sense there's more underneath.
- You've felt the limits of what words alone can hold.
- Something in you is ready to shift, and you want to give it form.
- You're drawn to image, color, and form as ways of knowing — not just as decoration.
- You're ready to begin a creative practice, even if you can't yet name what's calling you.
Hi, I'm Terri Altschul
I’m a depth coach and the creator of The Visual Journaler™ method. For over a decade, I’ve been helping women in the second half of life create hand-crafted books that carry the wisdom of their lives.
This work changed my life. It gave me a way to process what words alone couldn’t hold — and it connected me to parts of myself I’d forgotten existed.
I created this experience because I believe every woman deserves to know what it feels like to hold her own wisdom in her hands. No artistic skill required. Just willingness to show up.
— Terri Altschul, The Visual Journaler™
Frequently Asked Questions
Scrapbooking preserves memories. This excavates meaning. You're not documenting what happened — you're discovering what it made of you. The images, paint, and mark-making are tools for going inward, not decorating a page.
Yes. This practice has nothing to do with artistic skill. You don't need to know how to draw, paint, or design. You need a willingness to put something on a page and see what it says back to you. That's all.
A journal, a glue stick, some paint, and images that call to you — torn from magazines, printed, or found. A complete list of supplies is included in the experience. We do use mixed media, which you may need to purchase. A complete list of supplies is in the Studio Practice.
Yes. This experience is self-paced and a reference guide if you ever feel stuck.
A Wisdom Map is a guided excavation through a specific territory of your life — a crossing, a becoming, a question you're carrying. Each map uses Visual Wisdom Keeping to work that territory across several spreads, on the Studio Platform. Excavating the Wisdom in You is the first map you'll meet when you're ready to go further.
Your Book of Wisdom is open and your first spread is complete. Crossing the Threshold — the next Wisdom Map — is waiting when you're ready to continue. Same practice, new territory.
The Wisdom is Already Yours
This Is Where You Begin
Not given to you. Not taught to you. Excavated by you — layer by layer, carried forward in your own hands.
free, no card required
Terri Altschul is an ICF PCC—a Professional Certified Coach with more than 30 years of experience and thousands of coaching hours.
She works with women in the second half of life, drawing on Jungian depth psychology and Visual Wisdom Keeping to guide women across the threshold into wholeness.
Her gift is holding space for what's emerging—and helping you become who you haven't yet been.
