Warda Farah, our guest blogger this week, is a Social Entrepreneur, Speech and Language Therapist, adjunct lecturer and author. She set up her company, Language Waves, to address the barriers that Black and minoritized families face when accessing Speech and Language Therapy services, by offering alternative services that are culturally and linguistically affirming. Her approach is guided by her own experiences as a neurodivergent Black woman and subverts the traditional medical model of Speech & Language Therapy by centering language as a multimodal emancipatory tool that resists the standard language ideologies imposed on minorities. “Whilst wearing many hats,” says Farah, “ultimately my work aims to centre Black Joy.”

As a student, I was constantly bombarded with the idea that the way I thought, spoke, and wrote was not good enough. I was made to believe that my writing lacked structure, was grammatically inconsistent, and always missed the mark. For years, I struggled with my writing, never feeling confident in my ability to express my thoughts clearly and coherently.

These perceptions of myself as a thinker, writer, and human being were internalized and deeply ingrained within me. It’s only now that I’m starting to realize the full extent of the impact that standardized language ideologies have had on all of us. Because I was always striving to meet the strict standards set by my teachers and the academic world, no matter how hard I tried, I always fell short. This constant feeling of inadequacy took a toll on my self-esteem and left me feeling defeated and discouraged.

It wasn’t until I started to question the very foundation of these standardized language ideologies  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37018017/ that I began to see a glimmer of hope. I began to realize that these rigid rules and expectations were not set in stone, but rather, were arbitrary and subjective. The idea that there is only one correct way to speak, write, and think is not only limiting but also exclusionary.

As I continue to explore and embrace the complexities of language, I’m starting to shed the negative perceptions I once held of myself as a writer and a thinker. I’m learning to appreciate my unique voice and the value it brings to the conversation.

As a result, a few years ago, I embarked on a creative form of therapeutic healing and meaning making. I began to write in my own voice. In the blog below, I share an excerpt of a fictional story I wrote to help connect me with my own roots.

I have entitled this piece: Constellation of luminous beings.

As the sun disappears and the dark blanket of night deprives us of warmth and light, Mama gently blows the coal. In her right hand, she grips a bottle filled with gas, the red lid is now ecru but it still maintains its curves. In her left hand she has a strategically cut oblong piece of cardboard, Mama says it’s just the right amount of thickness to fan the flames. Everybody else has gone into town, where the electricity flows twenty-four hours, not like Mama’s house powered by a generator. She says she hates electricity, it changed everything, it turned the villagers into zombies.

Her body still, she inhales deeply, it never used to take her this long, but my eyes stay fixed on the coal embers waiting for the moment her breath, like a gust of wind, shoots out of her hunched body-—just like that, Mama stretches her arms like Lamborghini doors shooting to the sky. As if by magic, a gust of wind whooshes past us and smashes into the coals. Mama’s body slowly hunches, she turns her face, half smiles and says “That came from the ancestors, they know I need the help, alhamdullilah”.

More gas is now added, and she waves her hands like a wild sorcerer conjuring fire. After this she carefully positions her bottle by her bejeweled sandals.

At home making a cup of tea is an automated process, there is no joy or community in fixing a brew. In Ethiopia making tea is a spiritual experience, thought and effort is required. Mama picks cardamom and barters for clove and spices. We have learnt to perfectly time our tea cravings, for the precise moment that mama’s favourite goat Cassiopia’s udders leak with milky rivers. Mama calls it Jannah milk, the milk of heaven flows through Cassiopia and as we pour it into our tea, the two worlds meet. Heaven and Earth fold into one another and remind us that we are connected to the divine.

When the war began forty years ago, Mama left her ancestral home for the island England. She believed she was the first member of her family to leave home, and for that she felt guilt and shame.

She vowed that she would never forget her ways and she never did. At the first sign of some order being restored, Mama left, vowing to never return to England. Every time I look at Mama conjure fire, I can see her mothers, mothers, mothers, mothers, mother, and I feel connected to my bloodline, it’s still strong despite the disconnect in time and space, separated by land and sea.