Post 9: Curator’s Closing Reflection
An Internal Family Systems (IFS)–inspired digitalfoot project
Curated by: Latasha Pennant | Morgan State University, Urban Educational and Leadership Doctoral Program
Focus: Integration, ancestral attunement, and closure — honoring Pauli’s internal system as a blueprint for collective healing across time, lineage, and community.
Murray, P. (2018). Song in a weary throat: Memoir of an American pilgrimage (V. Schomburg & P. Ware, Eds.). W. W. Norton & Company.
Discharge Summary
Pauli’s story is not one of pathology but of persistence — a sacred mapping of how brilliance and pain can coexist in the same body. Across these sessions, she moved from fragmentation to flow, from vigilance to belonging. Her parts — the Child, the Watcher, the Scholar, the Activist — each found their place within a larger harmony.
As a therapist and descendant of this same lineage, I felt her story move through me — in breath, in body, in remembering. There are parts of me that resonate deeply with her story and her honoring of lineage. Like Pauli, I, too, have traced legacy origins and family names that have stood at the scene for generations — helpers, motivators, encouragers, and healers. They, too, have their rightful place within me. And as I extend myself in each of these roles, I am reminded to do so with balance, awareness, and grace.
Pauli’s life was a testament to integration — of intellect and faith, activism and rest, mind and soul. Her journey teaches that healing is not linear; it is energetic, ancestral, and communal. It reaches backward to soothe those who came before us and forward to sustain those who will follow.
As this therapeutic pilgrimage closes, I imagine her walking with a steady rhythm, unhurried, finally at peace. The work continues, but the striving has ceased.
Thank you, Ancestor Pauli, for joining me in this sacred space — for imparting ancestral wisdom through attunement that transcends time and place. Thank you to the universe for its generosity, for allowing sacred movement to flow freely, unrestricted by boundaries.
To the descendants of this lineage: walk lightly, and listen closely for the whispers of the ancestors. They speak in many forms — through stillness, through story, through the quiet knowing that healing, too, is a form of remembrance.
May her story — and ours — remind us that healing is not about arrival but remembrance. We heal in community, across time, through the whisper of every ancestor who reminds us: we are already whole.
