Dr. Niama L. Williams
An accomplished author, expressive poet, experienced speaker, college professor, radio show host, intuitive counselor and consultant, Dr. Ni thrives on helping her clients “blow up the barriers” keeping them stuck in lives that do not fulfill.
For more than 16 years, Dr. Ni taught in the trenches of part-time academia as a literature professor. Frustration with the job insecurity, no benefits, and low pay drove Dr. Ni into consideration of her own business and the launch of Blowing Up Barriers Enterprises. She knew firsthand what it meant to toil at a job one loved but which no longer satisfied, and she wanted to free others as she worked to free herself.
Such bold action requires nerves of steel and a strong back to deal with financial and emotional turbulence. Dr. Ni’s refiner’s fire began at three when her oldest brother decided rape would be his weapon; when she was eight, her other older brother decided to vent his frustration with his fists.
Dr. Ni emerged from this background and her parents’ desire not to know nor to act with a resilience that propelled her into and through stepping out on her own while reaching back “to teach one.” She now offers workshops designed to liberate the spirit, soul, and pen as well as books that document her journey out so that others may benefit from her pain, loss, and experience.
As she faces the arrival of her 50th year in 2012, Dr. Ni builds her intuitive counseling practice and spreads the word about her books, workshops, and consulting abilities. The heart of Dr. Ni’s ministry are the five collections of poetry (Steven, Brown Women, Famous Faces, Soul Work, and Sex, Blood and the Mountains), four novels (The Journey, Detective Fiction, Sojourn in Calidía, Ruby) and her dissertation. Within each book, Dr. Ni documents her survival and lauds those who were role models or who assisted her achievement.
That achievement precipitated the creation of workshops that would free others from life, career, emotional, relationship, or spiritual prisons. “Affirming the Fully Imagined Life,” a 29-week workshop series with three components that must be taken in order, builds community among participants and supports them as they take the first bold steps of imagining the life they want then completing concrete tasks that will make that life their own. “It’s Okay to Want” does the same thing for survivors of sexual trauma.
Dr. Ni’s core message is that the still small voice within is the only guide we need, and her intuitive counseling practice trains individuals and couples to listen to it and then do what it says, the latter often necessitating constant encouragement and building of esteem. Dr. Ni lives to provide that for her clients, workshop participants and readers of her books for her mission, always, is to help us all “blow up our barriers.”
