Post 7: Session 5 – The Fire That Would Not Go Out
An Internal Family Systems (IFS)–inspired digitalfoot project
Curated by: Latasha Pennant | Morgan State University, Urban Educational and Leadership Doctoral Program
Focus: Transformation of pain into activism; emergence and fatigue of the Firefighter part
Murray, P. (2018). Song in a weary throat: Memoir of an American pilgrimage (V. Schomburg & P. Ware, Eds.). W. W. Norton & Company.
Client: Pauli Murray Date of Birth: November 20, 1910 Date of Death: July 1, 1985
Session Summary
In this session, Pauli explores how her inner fire — once a response to danger — became the very force that fueled her purpose. What began as the body’s attempt to survive fear evolved into a lifelong devotion to justice.
After years of living in vigilance, Pauli learned to outwork her pain. Knowledge became her armor; advocacy, her language of release. From the classroom to the courtroom, she transformed survival into service. The same energy that once kept her awake in childhood — scanning for threat — now kept her awake in pursuit of equity.
Through reflection, the client began to recognize how this Firefighter part carried layers of inherited energy: her grandmother’s fear, her father’s restless intellect, her mother’s quiet endurance, and Aunt Pauline’s steadfast vigilance and service to community. Each of these ancestral imprints found expression in her drive to achieve, to uplift, to repair.
Yet even as that fire propelled her forward — through law, civil rights, and ministry — it left her weary. She spoke of cycles of intensity and exhaustion, moments of brilliance followed by collapse. What she once called “mood swings,” the therapist reframed as the nervous system’s rhythm — parts moving between hyperactivation and depletion, the body’s plea for rest after years of relentless doing.
Together, they explored somatic grounding as a way to soothe the body that had learned to equate motion with safety. Through breath and awareness, Pauli began to meet her fire not with suppression, but with compassion — to see that rest, too, could be a radical act of faith.
By session’s end, Pauli expressed gratitude for understanding that her purpose was never born of pathology but of transformation. “It wasn’t just that I fought,” she said. “It’s that I refused to forget what needed healing.”
Therapist Notes
As Pauli began to reconstruct her family’s story, she recognized the legacy she carried — a lineage of intellect, endurance, and service. The pursuit of scholarship was not merely personal ambition; it was an act of continuity, a way to honor those who came before her by transforming their struggle into purpose. She used learning as a sacred act — to affirm the humanity of others and to challenge systems that suggested otherwise.
Her activism became a continuation of her family’s unfinished prayers — her grandmother’s vigilance, her father’s restless brilliance, her mother’s compassion, and Aunt Pauline’s community-centered devotion all found renewed life through her. What she inherited, she transmuted into collective freedom.
Pauli once said, "When my brothers try to draw a circle to exclude me, I shall draw a larger circle to include them."
