Asifa Sheikh

Asifa grew up surrounded by multiple languages and parents who loved words.

She would come home from school to hear her mother reciting holy scripture in Arabic, and her father reciting the Urdu and Punjabi poetry he had been nurtured in as a child growing up in Pakistan. Her family loves to tell the story of how they would find her, night after night as a small girl, buried under blankets, writing and reading with a flashlight until she couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer.

This came to a head at age six, reading the Qur’an in its original Arabic with her mother every day before breakfast. Asifa fell deeply in love with the sound of words, even in a language she didn't fully understand. Her father encouraged her to write, passionately and from the heart, and would proudly share her work with others.

Through the years, Asifa nurtured writing as a secret hobby, hugely satisfying and almost entirely private. She scribbled inspiration on napkins in restaurants, took writing classes at the University of Toronto and wrote poems for friends celebrating birthdays, weddings and funerals. She loved this relationship, but she longed for more.

When she found Firefly, she took great comfort in knowing there were people who believed in the power and beauty of language in the same way she did… And could live out that love within community. For over a decade, she has facilitated therapeutic groups for mothers and children who are healing from violence, and believed deeply in the power of small groups, but had never brought that love into her love of writing. Just knowing that Firefly was real felt like enough, becoming part of the team was a dream come true.

Asifa believes that writing is about tapping into the fluid, unseen grace flowing through humanity, and sharing our gifts no matter what they look like. She loves working with writers who are looking for their voices, feeling nervous and tentative as she once did. She has a gentle and powerful presence rooted in her profound understanding of how to hold space for transformation. She also loves exploring how embodied practices like meditation, Qi Gong and Tai Chi can let our words and ideas flow in new ways.

Asifa completed her Firefly coach training in the spring of 2020.

Her perfect Saturday would begin with a strong pressed coffee while cuddling with her cats, a walk somewhere green and beautiful with a rosary around her wrist, listening to a podcast — Levar Burton Reads, Qiological, This American Life — cooking with her loved one, and an evening of playing games with her neighbours over tea and treats, making sure they all ate well.