The Story of All This Pt. 1
Excerpted from WOMEN OF COURAGE: Inspiring Stories from the Women Who Lived Them by Katherine Martin (New World Library, Fall 1999)
Twenty-three-year-old Sabrina Ward Harrison opens her recent book, Spilling Open, with a quote from the poet Walt Whitman about “washing the gum from our eyes and dressing ourselves for the dazzle of the light”. Witness to the struggles of women and men, Whitman threw them a challenge: “Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore, now I will you to be a bold swimmer, to jump off into the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout! and laughingly dash with you hair.” With this, her first book, Sabrina let go of the plank and dove deep, opening herself for all the world to see.
I was living in Berkeley, a student at the California College of Arts and Crafts, when the chain of events occurred that would lead me to write Spilling Open. Not in my wildest dreams could I have imagined I’d be so vulnerable, that I would lay myself bare for all the world to see. I hadn’t planned to go to art school right out of my senior year at La Canada High School near Pasadena, California. I didn’t know what I was going to do. All my friends were making college plans and talking about joining sororities. I was barely passing algebra and grateful to get accepted at my least favorite college.
Then one day, my art teacher Karen Mealiffe, who apparently saw a flicker of something in me, took me aside and said, “Get your head out of that dark hole.” I went through horrible stages growing up when I doubted and doubted and doubted myself, when I hated myself. “Get out of Southern California,” Karen urged, “and go to art school.”
“But I don’t even have a portfolio,” I protested. I was no child prodigy but a late bloomer, not discovering art until my sophomore year of high school. Who was I to think that I would be accepted by an art school? To which, she replied, “I believe in you. You have something, you have an eye. I know, trust me on this.”
At the California College of Arts and Crafts, I was studying with mostly second degree students who had already graduated from college. I, on the other hand, was 18 and this was my college equivalent. The environment was very intense and competitive. In the beginning, I was drawn to graphic design, the kinds of things you see in great ad campaigns. The power of words and images fascinated me. I loved the Nike campaign about women being women, unfettered. It ran powerful quotes about not being boxed in – “You do not have to be your mother unless she is who you want to be; the only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be” – over strong photographic images of women. I was captivated by the message. It was potent. It was honest.
When I signed up for a class called “Life Stories” taught by the poet, Opal Palmer Adisa, I had no idea where it would take me. The very first day of class, she did an exercise with us during which we closed our eyes while she led us through a guided visualization about trust, taking us on an inner journey to find ourselves, to trust ourselves. It reminded me of a time when I was rock climbing with my dad. I was ten years old and, at one point, the mountain got so steep that I froze with fear and started to cry. I couldn’t go any further. We were with a group of people, all harnessed in and, had I not gone on, everyone would have had a risky descent back down the mountain.
Very calmly, my dad said, “Brave on the rocks,” to remind me of how I would always walk on rocks when I was little. His voice was soothing and patient, “Close your eyes Sabrina, I want you to close your eyes and imagine your next step; and then the one after that; and then the one after that. Once you can see it, you can be there, the power is in seeing, being open to where you can go.” It was a definitive moment in my life. I got to the top of that mountain and it gave me a powerful sense of what was possible in life. And now, Opal Palmer Adisa was taking us on a trip of inner seeing to find our own true voices, to trust in what we heard. When we opened our eyes, she told us to take out a piece of paper and write, “I need to write because,” and fill in whatever came to mind, uncensored. We were to get journals -”big and blank” – and write in them, “I have to write because,” and “This is what I need to say,” or “This is what I have to say.” And so, I began my journals, getting what was inside of me out and slowly finding my voice.