Serenity Monthly Publication
Evergreen, CO
By Amy J. Born
Survivor
There is a new artist in town. Sabine Becker creates unique, tiny dolls out of leather, pheasant feathers, beads and antlers. She calls them Spirit Dancers and, she says, they represent perseverance,strength never giving up, even in the face of overwhelming odds.
Sabine’s life story is fascinating even without the part that qualifies her as a survivor. Born and raised in Germany, she arrived in Bailey last February, by way of France, Africa, Switzerland, South America, Alaska, New Mexico and Idaho. She worked as a humanitarian relief worker for Medicine Sans Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders) in Somalia, Ethiopia, and Venezuela. She met her first husband, a doctor, while working in Africa. She gave birth to a son and continued school in France, studying clinical psychology. She and her husband divorced. Sabine, now a single mom, took her son to Canada, where she got a job as a translator. After a visit to Alaska, she liked it so much, she moved there and raised her son while doing social work with the native population. She turned her artistic talents to creating beautiful little dolls. When her son graduated from high school and went out on his own, she decided, to move on as well. She left Alaska to fulfill a dream of living in Taos, New Mexico. She and her boyfriend, Rick Cordova, then moved together to Idaho for 7 months, then Colorado for 1 year and eventually settled in Alb., New Mexico where they now work as realtors for The Vaughan Company Realtors. Sabine continues to create her Spirit Dancers and is also a motivational speaker.
Oh, and, Sabine has no arms. When Sabine’s mother was pregnant with her, she took the drug Thalidomide, an over-the-counter medication recommended for nausea in the 1950s and early 1960s. Thalidomide was not well tested and its use resulted in thousands of babies born with birth defects, including malformed or missing limbs. While many of these children wound up in institutions or special homes, Sabine was more fortunate. “I was very lucky to have parents who understood the tragedy but went beyond that,” she says. Beginning at nine months old, Sabine went regularly to physical therapy. While other children learned to do things with their hands, Sabine learned to do things with her feet.
“There was no pity for me. My parents would say, ‘Sabine, just do it.’” she remembers. And, like her younger brother, or any other child, she would do what needed to be done, just differently.
Growing up, Sabine did everything her friends did – roller blading, climbing trees. She even rode a modified bike. The kids she knew were used to her, and no one focused on her disability. She attended regular, mainstream schools. She loved to travel and always wanted to be a flight attendant. “When I was 12 or 13 and still thought that, I finally understood I was different.”
Sabine graduated from high school in 1979. She moved to Paris where she attended college and studied social work. “In 1981, I decided I wanted to go to India. I was an idealistic hippie girl,” she says. But she ended up traveling to Somalia and Ethiopia doing humanitarian relief work. She married a French doctor, and they made their home in France. In 1983, at age 21, she gave birth to her son, Nick.
“That was hard,” she says of caring for a baby. “I was still a student, and having to do everything with my feet. I’d never changed diapers in my life!” She says it helped having her family just a few hours away in Germany and her husband’s family close by. “I taught myself how to change diapers, hold him, and prepare meals for him. It was a challenge.”
Sabine recalls, “At three or four months old, he sensed I was different from his father. He wrapped his little arms and legs around me and clung to me like a little monkey.”
She continued school, getting a degree in clinical psychology. She lived in Switzerland for a time, and worked in Venezuela, but France was still home. Sabine and her husband eventually divorced, and in 1988 she and Nick moved to British Columbia where she went to work as an English-French translator. From there she went to Alaska for a visit. “I liked it so much I stayed for 15 years.”
In Alaska, Sabine went back to social work with the Alaskan natives. “I lived for two years in the bush close to the Bering Sea.” She also began making her colorful Spirit Dancers. “I always had an interest in artistic things. Someone suggested I sell them at art shows. That supported me and my son, and was another avenue to create awareness [of what people with disabilities can do].”
Sabine learned to sew in high school. With some trial and error, the same way she learns to do most things, she figured out how to use a sewing machine and to sew with a needle and thread. To make her dolls, she sews each leather body and stuffs it with fiberfill, cuts out clothes from a pattern using a rotary cutter, strings miniscule beads and a usually a tiny bear fetish (a symbol of strength and overcoming obstacles) for a necklace, adds a face made from a piece of moose, caribou or deer antler, puts it all together and decorates it with a pheasant feather crown and a miniature basket to hold – all with her feet!
At an art show, she met someone from Very Special Arts of Alaska, an organization that brings the arts to disabled children. Her experience as both a social worker and an artist, combined with her own disability, made her eminently qualified to work with them. She conducted workshops around Alaska. “I like working with kids. It is interesting because they could look up to someone who stands for ‘Yes, you can.’ I used the arts to work on self-esteem. I would say, ‘Okay, you don’t have [whatever] but look what you do have. And I worked with their parents, who had terrible guilt about their children.”
When Nick graduated from high school and went out on his own, Sabine left Alaska to fulfill another dream: living in Taos, New Mexico. She began speaking at disability awareness conferences, mainly in Texas, for teachers, those in the medical community, and others who work with people with disabilities. “The goal of the speeches is to make people aware that just because someone looks different, doesn’t mean they are helpless,” says Sabine. She adds that while the perception has improved over the years, many people still have a lack of understanding of the abilities disabled people have. “This is my life goal – to make people aware that there is much more than what is on the surface. I have met people with many disabilities who are still able to do things.”
Sabine has received national recognition for her efforts in working with the disabled. PBS made a documentary, she has received the "Alaskan of the Year" award, and was very involved with the University of Anchorage Alaska in promoting disability awareness.
Now, as a realtor, living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, she still wants to help people in finding their "castle" their own, unique place.
Sabine also specializes in finding accessible homes for people with disabilities.
Her life is centered around assisting people, be it as a Social Worker, Motivational Speaker or as a real estate broker.
Sabine has been recognized nationwide for promoting disability awareness and for her work as an exceptionally skillful artist.
Here are some articles from The Nucleus, The Jemez Thunder, Northern Mirror, Albuquerque Journal, Frontiersman, iCan News Service, iCan, Alaska Women Speak, Anchorage Daily News, Kenai Peninsula Online and Very Special Arts of New Mexico.
Below is an article taken from the Serenity Magazine, titled "Survivor". Due to it's length it was scanned and pasted into the website.
Please check back regularly, as there will be a video of Sabine available soon.
As always, question and comments are always encouraged and appreciated.
Life Without Limits
The Story Of The Spirit Dancer...
Artist And Motivational Speaker, Sabine Becker, presents:
