Barbara Ohuninifa
Griot. Author. Ancestral Strategist.
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Helping Black women remember who they are, reclaim what was taken, and return to themselves.
Barbara Ohuninifa is a griot, author, and ancestral strategist whose work lives at the intersection of storytelling, ancestral wisdom, and the liberation of Black women. Her path to this work was forged through fire — surviving a near-fatal aortic dissection, a rare pheochromocytoma tumor directly connected to chronic stress hormones, and the complete dismantling of a life built for survival rather than sovereignty. She did not write about healing from a safe distance. She wrote from inside it.
Through her books, workshops, email series, and speaking work, Barbara addresses what most healing spaces avoid: the ancestral and intergenerational roots of what Black women carry. Her framework moves through seven portals — from nurturing the body to activating womb wisdom to finding belonging in nature — integrating African spirituality, somatic healing, and narrative medicine into a path of remembering rather than reinvention.
Her memoir, From Fat, Black, and Unlovable to Beautiful Powerful Love, chronicles the unraveling that became the foundation. Her activity book, Remember Who The F*ck You Are, moves through all seven portals with reflection prompts, practices, and medicine for Black women ready to stop surviving and start remembering.
Barbara's work is rooted in one conviction: Black women do not need to be fixed, saved, or empowered by an outside force. The brilliance was always there. The work is remembering it.
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Join the Movement — Remembering, Healing, and Liberation for Black Women
Barbara Ohuninifa creates spaces — digital and in-person — where Black women can stop performing and start remembering. Through books, speaking engagements, a free email series, and a growing community, her work returns Black women to the knowledge they have always carried.
Subscribe to Barbara’s YouTube Channel for videos spanning all seven portals — nervous system healing, shadow work, womb wisdom, plus digital nomad life and the ancestral remembering that runs through all of it.
Follow Barbara on Medium for essays at the intersection of race, gender, ancestral wisdom, and embodied healing — written for Black women navigating the crossroads.
Interested in booking Barbara for speaking engagements or workshops?
Barbara speaks to diverse audiences, bringing her lived experiences and unique perspective to inspire and educate:
Black Women’s Retreats and Community Events: Barbara speaks at sorority events, nonprofit conferences, cultural gatherings, and healing retreats — bringing the full weight of her story and her framework to audiences ready to go deeper.
Corporate Black Employee Resource Groups (ERGs): Barbara speaks to the specific cost of corporate environments on Black women's bodies, identities, and inner authority — and what reclaiming that looks like in practice.
Healthcare Professionals: Barbara helps providers understand the ancestral, somatic, and cultural dimensions of Black women's health that clinical training rarely addresses.
To book Barbara for speaking, workshops, or retreats, email connect@beautifulpowerfullove.com
Beautiful Powerful Love was birthed from a longing to live and to give.
The Beautiful Powerful Love movement began in 2018 as a series of community events celebrating the upcoming release of The Book (released March 2019.) The events were held in partnership with Langston in Seattle, Washington, and were designed to engulf Black women, and our co-conspirators, in culturally relevant performances along with workshops in various healing art forms. The community gatherings offered opportunities to come together and begin to identify that which keeps Black women and our communities unwell.
These events evolved into a movement inspiring Black women to remember how love ourselves.
Our Mission A storytelling movement for the remembering, healing, and liberation of Black women and femmes at a crossroads.
Our Vision A world where Black women and our families are healed, thriving, and living lives organized around something other than survival.
We Believe Black women do not need to be saved, fixed, or empowered. We need to remember. Through story, through the body, through the lineage — the brilliance was always there.
We Manifest Books, a free email series, guided meditations, workshops, immersive experiences, and community — returning Black women to themselves..
The inventiveness and resilience of the African diaspora, along with the authentic expression of our truest selves, is how we free ourselves from what colonialism tried to make us forget.
Together, we remember. Together, we heal.