About Us
The Ancestral Narrative Team
Tanya Taylor Rubinstein
Tanya Taylor Rubinstein is a writing mentor, storyteller, Ancestral witch, healer, and lover of mesas and mountains, particularly in her adopted soul home of 30 years, the high desert of Tewa and Diné land in New Mexico.
Like many of those whose people landed here on Turtle Island, she has wildly mixed ancestry.
On her mother’s paternal side, she is the daughter and granddaughter of colonizers (English and French) who settled on the Indigenous land of the Wampanoag (People of the First Light) and the Massachusett (People of the Great Hill), the Pawtucket, and Nipmuc. These tribes inhabited these lands for millennia before European colonization.
On her mother’s maternal side, she is the granddaughter of a line of hereditary witches from the Isle of Skye and Isle of Lewis in Scotland. Her clan, the MacArthurs, were traditional bagpipers for the Campbells.
On her father’s side, she is a descendant of Irish Catholics who were brutally colonized by the British, with many of her people from County Sligo.
Through the blessing of an adjacent milk line of Ancestors, and her conversion, she is also an anti-Zionist Jew.
Over the past twenty-six years, she has helped thousands of people write their stories as books, monologues, and one-person plays. She is also a Family Constellations practitioner and the founder of the Somatic Writing process. She is the editor of the book, The Cancer Monologue Project, published by MacAdam Cage.
Her work has been featured on NPR, CBS Early Show, ABC News, as well as in The Dallas News, The New Mexican, and Albuquerque Journal, in Spirituality and Health and Backstage, and on dozens of podcasts and radio shows, spanning three decades.
After devoting her life to the art and craft of stories, Tanya has come to understand that story arises from the vast experience we carry in our bodies, from this lifetime and others. True stories emerge from deep knowing: who we are, and our connection to all that came before us — human Ancestors, plant kingdoms, animal kingdoms, and Land.
At this critical crossroads in the history of humanity, we are each being urged to remember our most authentic selves, so that we may re-story the culture away from narratives of violence and harm toward a remembrance of Ancestral Indigenous wisdom — kinship, respect for all beings, and love: all my relations.
We desperately need these rooted, embodied, intimate narratives — your story, their story, her story — so we can feel our way along the illuminated breadcrumb path to a collective fire which can purify all that harms and exiles us from ourselves and each other.
In its place, we invite each other to sit and listen to our yarn in the Ancient now, so that we can create together an emergent world made up of our whispered heart’s desires.
To learn more about Tanya, please click here.
Stefania Pietkiewicz
Stefania and her three sisters were born with this intergenerational inheritance in a land she now calls home. The Lindens and Oaks of Poland have become the Pōhutukawa and Kānuka of New Zealand, where Stefania now honours both her ancestors’ arrival and the welcome they received.
Completing graduate studies in English Literature and Anthropology at Victoria University of Wellington, Stefania was invited to join the faculty, and began two decades of teaching undergrads to Wordweave by wielding a pencil, annotating pages and circling recurring words to reveal how meaning is created from patterns of language threaded onto pages to heal hearts and minds – of the writer and reader, both.
At that time she knew she was also being called to become a Worldweaver – revealing how words can weave a new world. And so began a career helping leaders understand how their words could create cultures and communities of harmonic integrity.
It was shortly after the birth of her first child, that the dormant intergenerational trauma erupted, and Stefania began a spiritual and psychoanalytic quest to bring her lineages’ lost children back to ‘living land’. She created her own practice called TrueStory, and began to receive and codify her work of Soulweaving through Storytelling.
Since then, Stefania has worked with women to help them remember their Soul’s purpose and retrieve the gifts borne through motherlines of ancestral pain. In a process that includes trauma-informed story sharing, journal writing, dreamwork, ceremony, art therapy, forest bathing and compassionate enquiry, she walks women back to their deepest truth – to begin again vividly living and ardently expressing it.
Her helping ancestors, both of blood and milk, have been blessedly many, and each is cherished in her heart. She knows that her work has come through her babcias, her grandmothers, who never crossed the ocean, and through this land known as Aotearoa, Land of the Long White Cloud. She thanks Saints Michael and Francis, Catherine and Teresa and Joan. She thanks her two beloved teachers, Thích Nhất Hạnh, and Carl Jung – their Raft helping her cross perilous oceans. She honours Rumi and Hafez, Shakespeare, Thomas Traherne, T.S. Eliot, Walt Whitman, e.e. cummings* and so many other artists, mystics and writers who helped her understand how poetry transmutes pain.
Her Tūrangawaewae, her place to stand, is on Beacon Hill, Wellington – New Zealand’s capital city – on the Whetū Kairangi ridge, overlooking the Pacific Ocean that carried her parents to safety, and also under dark sky in the small Wairarapa community, Te Ngahere Whetū, the Forest of Stars, that she and her partner founded with a vision of regeneration – of both people and trees, birds and bees, and a mighty River and Her wetland. Together in community there, they are ‘commoner gardeners’, tending soil and soul.
Stefania resonates with women who know they were born with a Story to live and a story to tell. Her greatest joy is to witness those she works with come to live and write and share their deepest truth. She knows this is how we heal wounded generations, weaving a new world together — with our Ancestors, Guides, Gaia and each other — making of this “gay great happening illimitably earth”*, our bountiful, sacred and shared home.
Jenn Tasnim Savage
Jenn Tasnim is a visionary guide and spiritual mentor devoted to supporting conscious leaders who have been forged in the fire of their becoming. She works with those who are ready to transform their lived wisdom into a powerful, lasting legacy — one that generates impact, creates wealth, and serves humanity.
Jenn supports leaders who know that sharing their personal story, signature system, and unique teachings through their business is part of building a new, equitable, and conscious world rooted in authentic expression, truth, and love.
The leaders drawn to Jenn are often voice-led creators — sensitive, intuitive visionaries who process their ideas through dialogue. Jenn helps clients turn their spoken insights into compelling writing that articulates their ideas and unique body of work. She specializes in translating personal transformation, client success stories, and mystical or complex concepts into grounded, resonant language that readers can understand, feel, and be moved by.
Jenn came into this world with a high degree of spiritual awareness and was initiated on her path at an early age. She was born into a family lineage of poverty, physical violence, and addiction, all of which set her up to dance in the shadows and eventually learn how to descend into the darkness to reclaim parts that had been abandoned — especially her voice. For her, being invisible and silent meant staying safe. Staying true to the family “lies” meant being loved, even though what was available was often not enough. She understands deeply what it means to survive, and now – with decades of personal healing and mentorship with highly skilled masters in various fields – what it means to thrive. She honours, in particular, her most important teacher, Sufi Guide Sidi al Jamal.
Jenn is an embodied leader who brings intuitive precision and deep presence to every collaboration. She offers safe and sacred space for those ready to deepen their connection to themselves, and then powerfully step into visibility, reclaim their voice, and anchor their leadership through story — so they can fulfil their destiny, create lasting impact, and build a legacy that generates both meaning and money.
Emily E Axelrod
Ever since she can remember, Emily E. Axelrod has been immersed in writing. Her parents met at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and one of her earliest memories is of attending poetry readings. She started keeping a journal at age 10, and in high school she won a Scholastic National Writing Award.
As a literature major at Purchase College, and as an English scholar in the Master’s program at City College of New York, she balanced literary studies with creative writing under the tutelage of authors such as Hettie Jones, Cecilia Vicuña, Barry Wallenstein, and William Matthews.
After graduation and a stint at substitute teaching in the New York City public school system, Emily worked as a legal assistant, during which time she became the go-to person for proofreading and editing her bosses’ legal briefs. Meanwhile, she spent her spare time teaching writing at local colleges, and attending a writing workshop conducted by New York Times bestseller, Jennifer Belle. In that class, she completed a novel, and has since gone on to publish a book of poetry, Minor Injuries. She is currently at work on a new manuscript of poetry.
Since the birth of her son, Emily has shifted her career to concentrate exclusively on education and mentorship. She teaches writing and literature at colleges and universities across New Jersey. She also runs her own tutoring and editing business in which she works with fiction and narrative nonfiction writers. Her most recent clientele includes a memoirist seeking more “show don’t tell” moments, and a blogger looking to build a following.
Comfortable with a diverse range of clients that includes English language learners and neurodivergent students, Emily promotes a supportive and positive environment by taking a holistic approach to tutoring. She helps address outside factors causing writer’s block, such as fear of failure, perfectionism, or anxiety.
Patient and sensitive to each student’s needs, Emily also believes in making the writing and editing process as joyful as possible. Taking a cue from studies that show happiness leads to success, you will find that the journey toward a healthy writing practice often begins with a smile.
Priyanka Khandalkar
Priyanka is the founder of SynrGEE, a done-for-you Operations Agency that supports soul-led entrepreneurs in scaling their businesses with ease, structure, and holistic support. With 16 years of experience in end-to-end organizational operations and community culture, she brings a unique blend of strategy and soul to every business she touches.
She is the creator of House of Scale and the Scale Engine programs, both designed to help leaders build scalable foundations without losing their heart-centered vision. As a Mastermind Coach and Trainer, Priyanka has guided thousands of leaders in stepping into their CEO role with clarity and confidence.
An Engineer turned Entrepreneur, Priyanka holds a Master’s in Industrial Engineering and Management from Western Michigan University and is a Certified Director of Operations (DOO). She has served as COO for multiple businesses, helping scale them to 7 and 8 figures through strategic systems, soul-led leadership, and operational excellence.
Priyanka is also the developer of the Soul-Heart Centered Leadership Framework, through which she has coached over 300 C-suite leaders to lead with intention, intuition, and aligned action. She has helped more than 1,200 entrepreneurs jumpstart and scale their expert coaching businesses while staying rooted in their values.
As the host of the Top 1% Global Podcast “Show Up With Priyanka,” she amplifies the voices of visionary changemakers, weaving together strategy, leadership, and community. A Top Woman Influencer Award recipient, co-author of “Wings of a Woman,” and a devoted mama to her 7-year-old daughter, Anvika, Priyanka embodies what it means to lead with heart, vision, and purpose.