Super-Mom – FARAH

Welcome to Week 24 of the Wise Not Withered Character Showcase! This week I am happy to introduce Farah, our 45-year-old Super-Mom! Farah is a school teacher, and a struggling widowed mother of two, dealing with depression and insomnia. I thought it would be interesting for Farah’s superpowers to develop in her middle age, rather than in her teen years or twenties—again, we are trying to break the mold of a woman’s “prime” being only in her child-rearing years. Many of the amazing wise women in this project are purposely childless; I thought it was of utmost importance to show that bearing children is not a goal for every single woman, and it is also not the “ultimate” goal for a woman, as though having a child is where her added value to society ends. That said, it was also important to me to include many mothers and mother figures in this project, since so many real women are mothers, and being a mother is an irrevocable identity that many women take pride and joy in. And to add in some more diversity, which is one of the more subtle yet extremely important aspects of this project, we decided that Farah would be a widow, forced by circumstance to raise her children on her own. Farah’s writer is Tilyan, who was born and raised in Kenya, and identifies culturally as Persian, specifically Balouch. Farah’s illustrator is Stef, who is German. I found both of these artists on Instagram, where Tilyan had posted some beautiful poetry and Stef has some amazing character illustrations. Read the rest of this showcase's transcript on wisenotwithered.com!