Sonder

n. The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.

Donna Schenker Holly, founder of Sonderful Productions, interviews and video records (currently on Zoom, but in-person sessions will be available soon) individuals and couples telling the stories of their lives to be preserved as a legacy for their kids, grandkids, other family members (as well as future family members!) and friends.

The goal of Sonderful is to capture some of the big things (like stories of one’s childhood, family ancestry, education, love, career, children, grandchildren, friends, passions, hobbies) as well as the little or not-discussed-as-often things, the stuff we often wish we knew (people’s favorite this or that, what they remember of historical events they witnessed, times they remember laughing the hardest, people who made the biggest impact on them) and those things that are hard to describe but that we so want to always remember (maybe it’s the way someone’s eyes crinkle when they laugh, how they wave their arms around when they’re telling a story, the funny squeak they make when they sneeze…the stuff that makes them them).

"The bench in the Sonderful logo is in honor of my father’s memory. We used to sit on random benches, watch all the people walking by and marvel at how we knew nothing about them, and wish that we did…Sonderful is my effort to shine some light on some of those lives in my own small way, and bring those cherished conversations to fruition.” -Donna

Sonderful Productions LLC

Donna Schenker Holly

646.554.8800

donna@sonderfulproductions.com