Healer, historian, movement builder — founder of Restore Forward
A Black feminist leader based in New York, Farah has spent more than thirty years creating places where women, survivors and whole communities can be seen, held and heard.
Farah began working on behalf of women in the early 1990s, running a women’s shelter. She went on to co-found Dwa Fanm, a Haitian women’s organization in Brooklyn, and to lead it as executive director.
Black Women’s Blueprint began in 2008 as sister circles, held on living-room floors and around kitchen tables. Under her leadership it grew into a civil and human rights organization with programs for survivors of gender-based violence, birth education and maternal health, and holistic healing.
She convened the first Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the United States focused on Black women’s experiences of sexual assault, and co-founded the Museum of Women’s Resistance.
“The struggle to restore individual and communal mental health is intertwined with racial justice and land justice issues.”
Farah Tanis
She was a 2012 U.S. Human Rights Institute Fellow, and in 2017 was among the organizers of the March for Black Women in Washington, D.C.
Begins working on behalf of women, running a women’s shelter.
Black Women’s Blueprint begins, as sister circles in living rooms.
U.S. Human Rights Institute Fellow.
One of the organizers of the March for Black Women in Washington, D.C.
Leads her community to take on land in upstate New York, alongside Indigenous co-stewards.
Restore Forward and The Reconciliation Center: a land-based healing ecosystem on 453 acres of forest in Ava, New York.
Farah Tanis
Trained in social work and certified as a family therapist, Farah is a licensed trauma therapist, somatic practitioner and health-sovereignty educator.
When she was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer, she looked beyond the diagnosis, to everything her body had been carrying. That journey is the root of the private consultations she offers today.
Through Restore Forward, she carries the same understanding onto the land: that life and the body recover at every level at once — the cellular, the communal and the ecological.
A private trauma, stress & body consultation: somatic support for people navigating illness, survivorship, chronic stress, grief, burnout, or a major life transition.
Consultations support the work of Restore Forward.