Who am I?

I’m a writer, trained mediator and facilitator, founder, and according to my anthropology professor in grad school, “an anthropologist”. 

My work over the past decade or so has sat in two buckets: investigating the past to inform the future through my research and writing and putting the research to action through building organizations that build on the wisdom of the past. 

When I was 15 I spent summers playing on the dirt roads of my family’s ancestral villages and sitting on cots with elders, documenting the past 1,000 years of our family history. Those summers, inspired by my mom taking me to hillside, rural villages across Gujarat inspired me to start a health and education non-profit, Aahana, that provides youth in rural communities with the tools and training to address social, economic, health, and education related challenges in their own communities.

My writing is inspired by those stories and stories that have come to be since. After college, I spent three years in India, living nomadically, kickstarting my own spiritual and healing journey. I lived in Nepal and Gujarat, India, doing development work and decided to turn those conversations with elders into a book. During this time, I also dove deeper into Ayurvedic medicine, vedic mythology, and the stories of my ancestors.

I went to grad school and focused on Anthropology, Storytelling and Creative Writing to dive deeper into my ancestral research - what I’m sharing now is informed by those years, researching and writing about my ancestors’ migration over time and the economic, agricultural, social, cultural, and spiritual / religious practices they cultivated over generations. My work in practice in the world, including my work with youth and building “rites of passage” experiences for them has been informed by this research and writing.

Everything I’m writing these days feels in draft form, but it’s the only way I know how to start sharing it with the world. So here we go.

Thanks for being here 🫶🏽

Love,

Rina