About

Dear Reader

For almost three decades, I have had the privilege of serving as the South African coordinator and trauma counsellor for The World’s Children’s Prize Foundation – an international human rights organisation devoted to the voices and rights of children. During this time, I have listened to, and held space, for hundreds of stories – especially those of resilient yet vulnerable women and children. These stories, in many ways, became both my calling and my curriculum.

As a lifelong student of storytelling, the narrative arts and African oral traditions, I followed a yearning to understand how healing and story are interwoven not only in spirit, but in science. In 2015, I registered for a PhD at the University of Cape Town, where I explored the union between narrative arts therapy and Indigenous healing practices. This journey led to a transdisciplinary doctorate awarded in 2020 – one that now lives at the crossroads of science and the arts, psychology and literature, anthropology and history.

The research I conducted within the Faculty of Science helped lay the foundation for a therapeutic narrative arts programme developed in collaboration with Indigenous communities in Southern Africa and the Dulwich Centre in Australia – a global pioneer in narrative therapy.

Today, I continue this path through my post-doctoral work, delving into the neuroscience of storytelling and our brain’s extraordinary, evolutionary capacity to make meaning through visual and verbal narrative.

My current programme, The Healer Within, is the heartbeat of this journey. It honours the meeting point of ancestral wisdom and contemporary science.

Warmly

Marlene