
Dr. Thema is the daughter of Rev. Cecelia Williams-Bryant and Bishop John R. Bryant, sister to Rev. Jamal Bryant, mama to Ife and Ayo, and granddaughter of Edith Holland Bryant, Harrison James Bryant, Pauline Lucas Williams, and Booker T. Williams—whose shared legacy of ministry, teaching, and community empowerment has been an invocation to her own calling. Growing up in Baltimore, the family’s ministry life in the African Methodist Episcopal Church proved a potent training-ground for the child whose soul, as the elders say, “had been here before.” Her lived experiences as a survivor of sexual assault, racism, and the family’s evacuation from their home in Liberia during the nation’s civil war helped to solidify her decision to become a healer. She earned a doctorate in clinical psychology at Duke University. She is now a tenured professor at Pepperdine University. Widely-recognized as a global expert on interpersonal trauma and serves as president of the American Psychological Association.
Dr. Thema builds an oasis—a portal to healing and a praxis of liberation everywhere she goes. She wants us to heal, to remember that we are “worthy and deserving of care,” and that self-care and community care are best cultivated in a mutually sustaining relationship. By “decolonizing psychology” and “bringing healing to the people,” she brings restoration and hope to the heart, mind, body, soul, community, and world.
We celebrate @dr.thema—Womanist, African-centered healer, liberation psychologist, scholar, sacred artist, minister, mentor, soul sister, and divine Black woman.
#BlackWomenAreDivine
Offered by Tabatha Jones Jolivet @tjonesjolivet
Graphic by Megan Castillo @megann.jade
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