On Sept. 24, 2025, the University of Delaware welcomed Ọlaọcha Nwabara, Ph.D. to the Black Table Talks speaker series, hosted by the Department of Africana Studies. Nwabara is an assistant professor of West African literature and cultures at Geneseo College. She discussed methods of centering self to achieve Black holistic healing considering our reality within Trump’s first year and the journey ahead. Nwabara draws from her own journey toward her chi — the Igbos’ understanding of one’s spiritual representation connected to the physical — through lived experiences as a Black woman, an Igbo person and a Black Studies scholar. These identities and beyond inform her journey to mental, emotional and spiritual well-being on one hand, but on the other have been critical to articulating how ancient African epistemologies are present and can be accessible within the everyday experiences (in art, scholarship, community). It is her hope that orating this journey in alignment in context with Maatian and Ifa informed notions of becoming, purpose and destiny can be useful to supporting emotional/mental well-being of Black/African people, as we join community to derive and divine epistemologies of healing for our scholarship and our community.