Recalling her struggles with the social pressures of high school in Beverly Hills, Sabrina Ward Harrison still wears the pain of it all. The instant the memory surfaces, a frown takes shape on her face.
“I wasn’t some blond-haired cheerleader with perfect thighs,” she says during her recent visit to Chicago. “I was trying to be an individual, but I still wanted to be in that group of girls who were gossiping near the lockers.”
Those tumultuous times and the emotions that accompanied them have not been packed away only to be pulled from Harrison’s memory. She has poured them onto the pages of “Spilling Open: The Art of Becoming Yourself” (Villard, $22.95).
In essence, the book is the published version of her raw, searing journals, which cover her teen years and chronicle her journey into young womanhood. The book’s intimate revelations have transformed Harrison, 24, into something of a guru, especially to women entering their 20s and who live in the Pacific Northwest.
“I have felt literally under siege at my Web site and in personal letters from young girls who have asked advice and have sent me deeply personal information about themselves,” Harrison says.
The appeal of”Spilling Open,” may lie in the fact that Harrison does not suffer from AIDS, has never had an eating disorder, was never abused by her father and does not take Prozac. Instead, like most American girls, she grapples with acne, algebra and insecurity.
Each page is a collage of paintings, drawings, photographs and verse.
“The thing is, we all ache,” she writes, opposite a photo of a sobbing young woman. “We all have growing pains and wonder if we are OK and enough and loved. The thing is–we are. Really.”
Harrison’s handwritten verse runs below a photo of a young woman’s mud-stained bare feet. Crude pieces of masking tape affix the photo to the page.
Harrison says she built her journals at a local copy center using recycled paper, leftover art supplies and other objects lying around her home.
“In the publishing world, everything is so slick and packaged these days. I think it’s funny that my book was edited with masking tape.”
Her journals were discovered almost by chance three years ago when she approached New World Library, a small publishing house in Marin County, Calif. “I wrapped up my journals in lavender paper and twine, left the package at the door, waved at the people inside and left,” she explains.
She later learned that the package was left against the door for two and a half weeks because the editors thought it was intended for another company. When they did explore the contents of the parcel, they invited Harrison to show off the rest of her journals.
In February 1999, New World Library issued in a first edition 20,000 copies of her works.
“We forget the anxiety of being young,” says Marc Allen, president of New World Library. “Sabrina is just so honest, so upfront.”
The book was re-released in August by Villard Books, a subsidiary of Random House.
Harrison is quick to admit she has enjoyed some lucky breaks. She grew up in a loving home. Her parents remain happily married and have always supported her artistry and writing, she says.
Until the age of 9, Harrison was raised in a cottage near Montreal. Then her father decided to move the family to Los Angeles, where he could pursue his dream of writing screenplays and directing films. Her mother taught parent education classes there.
Harrison remembers her father reading the poetry of Walt Whitman to her and her younger sister as they were growing up. He also introduced her to Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen.
“All I wanted to do was get the new Guess jeans, but my dad took me to museums,” Harrison recalls. “My mother always said I should just be authentic, just feel like I really feel. But I said `no.’
“I wondered if I really had a story to tell,” she says. “I felt I wasn’t worthy of sharing my life.”
The high school Harrison attended was intensely competitive and “you either had to have great looks or be a rock star or an athlete or be incredibly academic,” she says. “I was definitely none of those and it was really difficult.”
She relieved some of that social pressure every day by leaving school with a girlfriend during their 23-minute lunch breaks and scattering seeds in nearby highway median strips. Later, she was thrilled to watch the seeds sprout into colorful bursts of flowers.
“It was a way to escape and see something we’d built ourselves.”
A sensitive and emotional girl, Harrison remembers being teased for her vulnerability. She recalls waking up one morning and finding the words “Mrs. Harrison Raises Wimps” scrawled on the family driveway–an insult she felt she had brought on her mother.
After high school, she decided to attend the California College of Arts and Crafts, where she studied graphic design.
But in college, she often reverted to her painting and drawing. “My instructors would get impatient with me and say, `Stop using your handwriting. Get on the computer,'” she recalls.
When she was 19, Harrison contracted mononucleosis and returned home to live with her parents. “There I was, sitting at home in my parents’ kitchen, wearing my mom’s pajamas. I thought I’d never get my life back.”
Tired and depressed, Harrison called SARK, her favorite author, and left a message on her answering machine. A week later, Harrison’s phone rang and it was SARK, a.k.a. Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy, a best-selling inspirational author/artist/philosopher who wrote the book “Succulent Wild Women.”
In 1996, over jasmine tea, Harrison met SARK at her home in San Francisco. Harrison carried her portfolio from her graphic design classes.
“SARK said she wasn’t interested in that. She wanted to see my journal,” Harrison says. “She sensed that this was very important for me, that it had to be out there and that people would respond. I said no to her, that I had a lot of credit card debt, that I was working retail, that my feet hurt.”
With SARK’s encouragement, Harrison accepted an unpaid internship at Camp SARK, a business that oversees SARK’s artistic endeavors. And she devoted herself to her journal. “Spilling Open” carries a foreword by SARK. It says, “Sabrina is a luminous mystery, a carousel of feelings, lumps and discoveries. If you could lie down with her journals, you would see genius.”
Harrison says her message is “self-acceptance.” In “Spilling Open,” she writes: “I think if we can aim for just five minutes a day of complete acceptance of ourselves, we are doing very well! Belong to yourself.”
She continues to struggle to accept herself, she says.
“I’ll say to myself, `If my thighs just looked better in those shorts … Oh, if only I didn’t have acne.’ Those inner voices are so harsh. What I say to myself I’d never say to my best friend. I can’t believe how self-critical we are.”
Now living in Mill Valley, Calif., in a cozy house near a redwood forest, Harrison is working on a new project: clothing design. Using taffeta, she makes floor-length, flowing skirts stitched with cloth flowers and other fanciful trim. As she did in her journal, Harrison plans to superimpose photos, verse and other objects onto her skirts.
“When I was a little girl, I used to love to dress up in petticoats,” she says. “Lately, I’ve been wearing too many tight jeans. I think all women have.”
She also is working on her second book, scheduled to be published in fall 2001. The book will focus on her recent trip to Italy.
Characteristically, Harrison says she is worried about how it will be received.
“What if, in my next book, I’ve made other choices and I’m not seen as a role model, which I never set out to be?” she asked. “My message has always been not to be like me, but to be like yourself.”
