The path of the waters: accounts of healing processes

Abstract

Speaking, writing, externalizing emotions and/or experiences are actions inherent to healing processes. This text presents accounts of some of my experiences, particularly those related to my identity as a Black woman, through which I follow the courses of the waters in search of ways to integrate into social spaces such as academia and the professional world. I also narrate situations I lived through during the Covid-19 pandemic. The aim is to highlight the challenges faced by a Black female body in entering and remaining in academia with disruptive, Black-centered research. It is evident that fighting against oppressive systems while enduring social isolation, far from family, is not easy; however, with appropriate support, drawing on ancestry, and renewing faith, it is possible to navigate and keep moving the body —this ancestral Black technology— along a path toward self-knowledge, toward the inner waters.