“˜Spilling Open’ reveals life of author during college
By Daily Bruin Staff
Oct. 4, 2000 9:00 p.m.
 Villard Books Sabrina Ward Harrison’s writing, artwork
and emotion fill all the pages of her book "Spilling Open: the Art
of Becoming Yourself."
By Barbara McGuire
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
College is supposed to be the best time of your life, but for
Sabrina Ward Harrison, author of “Spilling Open, The Art of
Becoming Yourself,” it wasn’t.
With questions about the world and about herself, Harrison began
creating a journal that wasn’t comprised of just words on a
piece of paper, but was an artist’s adventure into her
deepest thoughts.
“I would say it was the book I most needed to read,”
she said in a recent interview prior to an in-store book reading.
“I created the book that I wanted to find in a bookstore,
especially in my early twenties in college.”
“People would look back on college and that time and be
like, “˜Oh, that was just the greatest time in my life,’
and I was 18, 19, going, “˜Um, this so
isn’t,'” she continued. “It’s so
confusing and there’s so many questions that I don’t
know where to even begin.”
 Sabrina Ward Harrison’s writing, artwork and emotion fill
all the pages of her book "Spilling Open: the Art of Becoming
Yourself." Harrison, now 24-years old, never wanted to publish her
journals, she never wanted to be a “self-help” guru for
women, but, somewhat by default, she’s become a role model
for just about anyone.
“Spilling Open,” is a compilation of the actual
journals she wrote between the ages of 18 and 21, but her insights
in the journals seem ages ahead of their time.
The book opens, “We all at our own age have to claim
something, even if it’s only our own confusion. I am in the
middle of growing up and into myself.
“This book is my life in progress. A growing expedition
through the tangled and unfilled in parts of understanding my life,
my truth, and myself.”
With such words, the pace for the book is set. “Spilling
Open” is Harrison’s story.
All the confusion she was feeling as she ended a relationship or
discovered her path in life. At the same time, however, it can be
anybody’s story.
“The whole time I was like “˜I can’t admit any
more, I can’t say this,'” she said.
“I thought I was going to be so embarrassed, but
it’s a really empowering feeling because as soon as you write
it all out there … a woman, someone you don’t even know
will read it and be like, “˜I feel like you’re reading
my own journal,'” Harrison said.
BOOK INFORMATION Â
BOOK TITLE: Spilling Open
AUTHOR: Sabrina Ward Harrison
PUBLISHER: Random House
PRICE: $22.95
RATING: 9
Original by ADAM BROWN/Daily Bruin Web Adaptation by MONICA
KWONG/Daily Bruin Senior Staff
“It connects me so much more to people and makes me
realize I’m not alone in this,” she continued. “I
think I would’ve lived at least the rest of my life always
thinking “˜I have so many issues. I’m so
crazy.”
Filled with photos of both family, friends and children drawings
as well as color and emotion, the journal is nothing like the
popular teen journal “Go Ask Alice.”
“I would just be sitting at school, or I’d be
sitting at a café, or I’d be home, trying to go to
bed,” Harrison said of her creative process. “I would
just be talking about life as it was happening and I wouldn’t
think, “˜Oh, this is what I’m going to publish in a
book,’ I was just letting it out.'”
And letting it out is exactly what “Spilling Open”
encourages its readers to do. It tells the reader to take action
and not to stay between the lines and do everything as everyone
else does just because it’s safe and secure.
One of the main goals of her book is to help readers realize
that what they may be unhappy and troubled with in their lives is
normal and OK.
Her mother, who often appears in various entries, aided
Harrison’s discovery of this goal.
“Mom and I were walking on the beach and I was explaining
to her how I wanted to get over all my insecurities, and la, la,
la, and she looked at me and said, “˜Sabrina, does anyone
really ever feel good about themselves for more than five
minutes?'”
“Spilling Open” relates the good and bad in peoples
lives to issues of self confidence and image perception, helping
readers learn from Harrison’s experiences.
“The Art of Becoming Yourself is the dark and the
light,” Harrison explained. “There’s so much in
our lives ““ there’s tragedy and so many expressions,
but there’s also so much delicate and simple beauty around us
everywhere.”
Though written by a woman, from a woman’s perspective, the
book doesn’t pigeonhole itself into a same-gender readership.
It’s about insecurities and learning how to deal with them
and how they aren’t all bad ““ a topic Harrison feels is
universal.
“You have everything from graffiti writers responding to
it, to 13-year-old girls, to 60-year-old women who are
transitioning in their lives,” she said. “I think
whenever you write about the human experience and the human
condition we can all connect to it if we’re open to
it.”
“Spilling Open” breaks rules that most books follow
and its colorful, varied pages, make for a book readers will find
hard to put down.
Looking through the book is like peering through a
friend’s vacation photo album into some place exciting.
It’s hard to put down until every picture has been
scrutinized.
Many may recognize the pages in Harrison’s book from the
Six Pence None the Richer music video “There She Goes.”
Harrison was commissioned to create huge replicas of her journal,
after the band spotted her book and loved it.
“They wanted to be inside my book, playing their music as
if they were inside my pages,” she reveled. “They were
supposed to be at my art opening, so I was there and I looked
totally disheveled, exhausted from painting it all.
“But it was fun; it was one of those things I never
thought I’d be doing.”
Currently Harrison is working on ribbon skirts which she will
sell at various boutiques and on a follow-up journal to
“Spilling Open,” she says focuses on the fact that just
because she published a book, doesn’t mean all her troubles
are answered.
Harrison explained how suddenly there was extra pressure on her
to be this great person, and she became so stressed out she
actually got ulcers.
A cheap plane ticket to Italy and a few months later, she
already had another journal.
“Spilling Open” doesn’t try to solve
everyone’s problems, but it does try to open readers up to
the experience of these problems and share with them the experience
of someone else who faced the same issues.
“There’s a great line that says, “˜We read to
know we’re not alone,’ and that’s what I wanted
to make ““ a book that made us breathe a little easier when
we’re trying to get through it all,” Harrison said.
