The tryouts were held over two days. We had no idea what to expect. We just knew she could play.
It was 1989, and Farah was trying out for 8th-grade girls’ traveling basketball in Coon Rapids, Minnesota, the land of ten thousand lakes and, it sometimes seemed, ten thousand white people. She had no team experience, only pure athletic talent. She was nervous. She was the only person of color in her 8th-grade class and one of only a few in the entire junior high, and she felt like she was under a microscope.
We were both nervous. It had been barely two decades since the Supreme Court struck down laws banning interracial marriage. There had been real progress toward racial equality since then, but people still regularly asked me whether Farah was adopted. I always answered, “No, she is my biological daughter.” On that day, as on every day, I was very proud of her.
We walked into the gym. I took my place with the other moms, and Farah went to the court as the drills began. Over those two days, I heard many remarks about her raw talent. On the second day, after lunch, the results were posted. She had not made the A squad.
She was devastated. When we got home, she sat down in a chair, ripped off her shoes, threw them on the floor, and said, “I am never playing basketball again.”
That wasn’t true. She had a great season on the B squad, where she was the star of the team. It was a wonderful thing, and it was also something that would eventually lead to heartache.
Like Farah, girls’ basketball was still in its infancy. Women had been playing the game since the year after it was invented, but in 1989 no women’s professional league had been able to take hold, and in traveling and AAU leagues, girls were treated as second-class players. Being treated as less-than was all too familiar to Farah, but she loved the game and found a friend in it. Women’s basketball then bore little resemblance to the game women play today, and Farah was lucky to get in on the ground floor. She went on to play on many championship teams and in college. One of my favorite memories is a regional competition where she led her team to victory.
These basketball memories still bring a smile to my face. But I also remember, with sadness, that the inside of Farah did not match the smiling outside. There were signs of brain health issues all along the way. In college, coaches and mentors called home many times, worried about her, but they also needed her on the court.
Eventually she came home to Minnesota after college, used up by the college basketball system and with few skills to show for it. She worked at girls’ basketball camps and discovered a real gift for teaching and working with others. Young campers flocked to her.
After many camps, and after a journey into alcoholism and drug addiction had begun, she discovered Bikram Yoga. She traveled to Santa Monica, California, studied at the Bikram Yoga College of India, and graduated as a top student. Once again she overachieved, trying to fill the sadness. After a time teaching yoga, she returned to music and art.
In the last years of her life, Farah lived in recovery from both a brain health disorder and substance use disorder. She stayed sober, but the brain health disorder overcame her.
She excelled in everything she did. In October 2013, five months before she died, she was interviewed on Box of Chocolates, a local cable television program featuring local artists. When I watch that video, I see so much beauty, and I’m reminded that all along her path, Farah blazed a trail: as a young woman of color, as a traveling basketball player, as a college basketball player who stood only 5'2", as a yoga instructor, as a person living in recovery, and as a musician and artist.
Her path held both joy and sadness, and it was shaped by a brain health disorder that persisted and insisted, wearing her down until she was tired and overwhelmed.
The most important trail she blazed was as my daughter, a woman I walked alongside on a journey of recovery. A whole system of care failed her, and so did I.
Living on in grief as Farah’s survivor, I relish the joy and embrace the sadness. Both drive me to be available to others living with brain health issues, to always seek to understand other people’s struggles, and to live a life in recovery that honors Farah.
Farah S. Williams, April 3, 1976 – February 4, 2014