Like any practicing speech-language therapist, I have often spent time helping people construct a narrative starting at the beginning. So the beginning is where I will start, and the beginning takes me back to my delicate, poetry-loving mother, and to my hard-working father, who bought me many books. It takes me back to my war-ravaged country, a land studded with volcanoes, lush jungles, dark beaches, house-sequined hills, gray lakes, coffee and sugarcane plantations. A world of great poverty and great beauty. A happy place; a tormented place. An enduring place; a place of contradictions. Close enough to dream about America's golden roads; far away to move to the beat of a Mayan song. In 2015, my native country, El Salvador, became the most violent nation in the Western Hemisphere, and in 2016, it was declared the deadliest country outside a war zone. Yet El Salvador has ranked among the top ten countries where people declare themselves the happiest. How is that for a contradiction?
Every beginning is full of contradictions, if you really think about it.
Like any ordinary kid, I grew up not knowing what I would do with my life. The single, most defining aspect of my childhood was never knowing anything about the future. I lived in the world and danced to verb tense of whatever book I was reading. My first beloved author was Judy Blume. We can credit her for a lot of my pre-adolescent language development. Later, much later, I discovered a Norton Anthology of English Literature in my house. I don't know who or where it came from. It had T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock in it. I imbibed the poem like someone intoxicating herself with wine for the first time. I remember thinking, I don't know what this poem is about, but it's absolutely delicious. Even then, I had no clue what I would do with myself.
My dream of someday going to college in the United States became true. I arrived in sunny, crepuscularly-muscular Florida at the age of eighteen. I attended the Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College with the initial intention of studying psychology, but it wasn't long until I met Michael Harrawood, a popular but stringent professor whose first-day-of-class lectures would make dozens of petrified students drop his courses. I like to point out that I was among the brave. Michael taught English Literature -- did I even have a choice? I signed up for his class on John Milton without knowing who John Milton was, or that he had written Paradise Lost. Even then, I had no clue what I would do with myself. I didn't know I would go on to drop psychology, have a hardcore love affair with Literature, major in it, even get a Masters Degree in it. I didn't know I would write an Honors Senior Thesis on a book by the sixteenth century French writer, François Rabelais, and a Masters Thesis on Paradise Lost. And I certainly didn't know that I would marry Michael and become Mrs. Harrawood.
In between graduate degrees, I taught a year of high school at Suncoast High School in Riviera Beach, Florida. It was a tough year. It was a great year. I was the drama teacher, the creative writing teacher, the journalism teacher, the study skills teacher, and sponsor of the drama club all rolled in one. I barely slept that year. I loved my students above all. They were my fuel.
By the time I was pursuing a Masters Degree in English Lit, I had come to understand that language is often the only real freedom we possess, and that language is democratic. Years later, I read a poem by the German-American poet, Lisel Mueller, titled When I Am Asked. To this day, I think of it as one of the most beautiful things I have read about the power and comfort of language.
It was after I became a teacher that I discovered the vast, galvanizing field of Speech-Language Pathology. The SLP who worked with my most challenging students seemed, to me, to have "super-teaching powers." She could make my "clueless" students listen, read, write, speak, and participate when I had no idea how to reach these children. She could them work in a group! And she could calm and comfort them. Definitely, this lady had some serious super powers.
So I became a Speechie, as we're often affectionately called. I have been a practicing speech-language therapist since 2012, and have loved every minute. My interests in this ample discipline have been kaleidoscopic. I work in a high school, and that is a dream setting for me, because... I love teenagers! As you would expect, I often work with students on expanding vocabulary and honing literacy skills, and it is at these times that I feel most grateful for my background in English Literature and as an academic writer. People have asked me, "Do you miss being a teacher? Do you miss English Lit?" My answer always is, "Yes and No! I adore my current profession, and I think having been a teacher made me a better SLP, and being an SLP has made me a better teacher."
Among my greatest interests and passions are working with students with Intellectual Disabilities and individuals on the Autism Spectrum Disorder. The big-heartenedness, mirth and doggedness of these students is unlike anything I have ever seen or known in anyone else. These kids fill my heart with joy on a daily basis. I guess you could say I became a Speechie and lived happily ever after... but like any practicing speech-language therapist, I know you can always expand a good narrative. ❤
12/6/17
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