In Episode 07 of Leaders of Tomorrow, psychologist and Camp Rising Sun alumna Dr. Sheila Graham speaks to LAJF Executive Director Helene Mattera about the transformative experience she had at camp and the trajectory her life took in the years following. They discuss:
Sheila’s memories of Camp activities
The opportunity CRS provides for campers to learn about how other people live—and what this means for their awareness of the world
How CRS laid the groundwork for Sheila to better understand emotions and empathy
Camp serving as an escape from home life for Sheila, who went on to become an emancipated minor
The way one experience during Leadership Day turned the way Sheila looked at the concept of leadership on its head
The pain of Sheila’s mother refusing her permission to attend Camp for a second year, and the relief of being able to later serve as a counselor at CRS Europe
And more!
Listen now:
Transcript:
Hello, welcome to Leaders of Tomorrow. I'm your host, Helene Mattera. We created Leaders of Tomorrow to share how the opportunity of attending Camp Rising Sun can change lives. Today, I'm speaking with Dr. Sheila Graham, a psychologist whose work centers around cultural competence, social justice and building personal connections. Sheila attended Camp Rising Sun in 1996, from Nyack, New York.
She shares about her path before and after camp, which was full of hurdles, hard work, and ultimately beautiful rewards. The loving and compassionate community of Camp Rising Sun can help build resilience and fundamentally change the trajectory of a young person.
So Sheila, I'm really looking forward to hearing more about your work that you're doing, and to talk about how that work has been impacted over time by Camp Rising Sun. And so would you just get us started? Tell us a little bit about what you're doing, what your life is like now and how you spend your professional time.
Sure. So I am a psychologist. I got my PhD in Counseling / Psychology from Columbia University and have been working in college counseling centers ever since. My specialty has been in working with cultural identities—training individuals on multicultural competence and cultural humility, as well as social justice and on campuses. This has been work that I find incredibly fulfilling, and often reminds me of my experiences at Camp because of the richness of my experience and getting to know people from a variety of different cultures, and how deeply that summer impacted me moving forward.
Before I went to camp, I have to say my life was pretty fractured. I was a very involved, very active student in my high school, and I had a teacher that had nominated me to the program. I didn't know much about it prior to that. And my home life and my school life were completely separate. In fact, the summer after the season I was at camp as a camper, I became an emancipated minor. And I would say probably the majority of people in my life at the time, had no idea how challenging my life at home was, during that time, sort of poured myself into camp, poured myself into my relationships.
But then that opened up to a whole lot of people, and the connections that I was able to make a camp allowed me to experiment with closeness and intimacy in a way that I had not experienced before, and the benefits of building those types of relationships with people. And now being a therapist—authenticity and transparency in the work that I do as a relational cultural therapist in particular, are pieces that are really important to me and part of the work that I do and engage with every day.
I can't imagine. That must have been really challenging to be having that life outside of camp and still kind of being part of the day-to-day. And would you tell us a little more, paint a picture for us about, you know, what 16-year-old Sheila was like?
When I went to camp, I had been back in the country for about five years. I was born in Brooklyn. When I was one, we moved to Costa Rica—both of my biological parents were immigrants from Costa Rica. And I lived in Costa Rica for the next ten years. So I was 11 when we came back to the US, and the process of understanding American culture, understanding through the peer and social culture at the time—I think was something that I was just emerging out of at 16, and camp provided a place in the space where I also got to connect with other people who were experiencing a culture for the first time—connecting with people from various cultures, where that was valued in a way that I feel that for most of my middle school years, which was just before I had gotten to camp, were, you know, just sort of trying to play this catch up and not really being able to see the value in the ways that my varied experiences were also strengths.
And being able to connect at Camp in particular with people from Latin American countries—there was a Costa Rican camper in particular that I was so excited to see because there were not a lot of Costa Ricans in Nyack, New York. And just to have the aspect of being someone who brought difference into a space—be something that was valued—I think was really important at the time.
I was a pretty ambitious student. I was being raised by a single mother at that point, and I was determined to make it to college. So any leadership opportunities that were presented to me was, well, “This is going to something that is going to help me advance.” And this is an opportunity that my family would not have been able to afford, had it not been a full scholarship, and so it felt like this huge chance to be able to be involved in something really amazing.
Sheila, what were some of the, you know, little moments at camp or specific activities, that you really got a lot out of that, you know, looking back all these years later, were real “aha” moments for you?
For me, being able to learn how to chop wood was a really amazing experience.
Yeah!
In part because—and I identify as queer, that is not something that was aware of at the time at Camp—but I was certainly finding myself struggling with the fact that it didn't feel like I fit all of the gendered expectations that were present in the social circle that I was in, and the school and setting I was in. I remember being put in gym class to play basketball with the boys because the girls thought I was too rough.
And at camp, I could be with all of the other young people and be myself in whatever way I wanted, without needing to feel like I was living by a particular expectation of what it meant to be a girl. And I was a strong person—I'm still a very physically strong person, I mean. And I could chop wood, in a way that was just—
—You're a powerhouse!
I was! And you know, the other thing I ended up doing in college was playing rugby, and I think wood chopping and playing rugby were probably very therapeutic for me, and like getting a lot of anger out. And feeling good about the fact that I was that strong.
And I really love that you brought that up, wood chopping. Because often people ask us like, “Well, what do you do at Camp Rising Sun?” and I go through this list of things. And some of those things sound really typical, like, “Okay, we have sports, and we have arts activities, just like at all the other camps.” And then when I start listing things like, “and then we chop wood, we teach the campus how to chop wood,” it's like, “You teach your teenagers like how to use axes?”
And then that's when I sort of launch into the “You know, it's not just about chopping wood.” We're not trying to make them lumberjacks and give them like a marketable skill, you know, to chop wood later on in life. But it's about this process of like, for many people, it's really a struggle—boys and girls alike. And it's, a lot of the young people that come to camp are, like you were, very high achieving—good at whatever they were doing. And to be humbled in this way, it really allows a different skill set to shine—that's first of all—and then you you have to concentrate, you have to be really present. It's almost like a mindfulness. And it also is an opportunity to really cheer other people on. There's parts of wood shopping where you really have to work with a partner to get something cut.
And so all of those things, and then I think part of it is just hard work and allowing campers to experience—like these intellectual kids—like what is physical hard work? And how do you respect that and understand that that's part of what makes the world work? And that all of this hard work that we do collectively, like everyone chopping a little bit of wood, allows us to have like these beautiful campfires every weekend, and so sort of like it's a metaphor, it's not just about like, you know, building strength or teaching them how to chop wood!
And it was a lot of fun!
And it was a lot of fun, yeah!
And I think that piece that you just named about being involved in all of the aspects of what a community needs, is another piece that I really—that really stuck with me, right? Like doing kitchen duty and, you know, helping clean Tent Hill, it just felt like this was our community. And I do think that that's something that comes through for me when I am a part of a team. I’m not someone who's going to say, “Well, that's not my role.” That when a community is meeting something, being able and willing to step in, even if it's something that's not—that you've practiced that—that it's just like, well, if this is a need that we have, as a community, I actually, I have that conversation often with our children, because, you know, just to be able to do things around the house that are necessary for us to be able to live in a comfortable home. That's part of being a part of a family, and I think that's something that was certainly instilled for me.
Well, family is like the first community that we’re part of.
It is, and for me family has been extremely complicated. And so to be able to have a place where that was illustrated so concretely, I think is maybe one of the ways and reasons that it's stuck with me. Because, for me, family has ebbed and flowed. I've had a variety of different sets of parents and lived in a lot of different settings. And I think Camp was probably my first “chosen” family, which is a term that we use a lot within the queer community of, you know, our families are sometimes not necessarily the families we’re born into, but the families that we are able to choose, and Camp was most definitely one of my first chosen families.
Hmm, me too, I can definitely identify with that.
So another moment that had a significant impact, and one of the clearest memories I have from Camp, was from my Leadership Day. And as I mentioned earlier, I was a very ambitious young person, and I had all these plans for what I hoped my Leadership Day would be like. And after lunch, for some reason, after we'd all spend time in Camp Hill, I think there were some pretty heavy emotional conversations. And as we're getting ready for instructions in the afternoon, there, like, are people at the assembly crying in different parts of this room—there's just like, people supporting each other and different people crying. And I decided that we needed to have what—I don't even know that I knew the term at the time—but that was later shared with me was an “informal council.” And we set up blankets and decided to cancel instruction time that afternoon, and people went around in the circle and just shared some of what they were either talking about, or what they were experiencing.
I think, at this point in my life, as a psychologist, I would say it was like a huge group session, and I was not facilitating the conversation in the way that I do in group therapy now. I was going back and forth between the main building and where we were all sitting, carrying pitchers of water and tissues. And I remember feeling like, “This is what a leader is.” That was one of those moments when it sort of shifted from “Oh, well, the prestige of leadership,” right, and being in front of people and having people recognize you—to service leadership to feeling really proud about the fact that I had been flexible, which was not necessarily my strength at the time. And my wife would probably say it's not my strength now. I had been flexible and changing, you know, what I had hoped for and planned—and that was providing, you know, what others were needing, which was water and tissues.
And for me, that is—I'm sorry, I'm feeling a little bit tearful—that is one of the the most impactful moments from Camp for me because it felt like I had really understood what leadership meant in a way that felt so different from what I had been taught leadership was.
I think that's so true and powerful. Something I really do appreciate about Camp Rising Sun and the way we approach leadership is this discovering all the different ways that you can be a leader. That it's not just the title that you have this one day of the summer that you get to lead, it's really a way of seeing and following through with what the community needs. It's a very service-oriented leadership model, and I think we hear that a lot.
Like, you know, young people come thinking like, “Okay, I've been the president of a club, or the president of my school,” or whatever it is, and then just sort of discovering, living in community, of what the myriad different ways of being a leader can look like. And as you're getting teary, I wish I could bring you tissues and water.
Aww, thanks Helene!
I can imagine you walking—I can see it in my mind, I know the path that you're talking about.
Yes! And I can, you know, as I think of myself in the primary role that I hold in my professional life right now, as a psychologist—the creation of that space is so much of my work, and facilitating the ability for people to express their emotions, and process and be present in connections with others. That is one of the ways that I feel camp is alive with me, most days of my life.
In thinking about, you know, you've just had this incredible experience, full of love. And, you know, I imagine that the Sheila that arrived on day one is different than the Sheila that went home. Can you tell us about that experience of going back after camp, to your life, and you know, what was going on for you and whatever you feel you'd like to share?
Yeah, I remember the day that—first of all, I did pull out my vigil letter. In my vigil letter I talked about like, how am I going to survive the end of Camp?!
And just to pause for a second, the vigil letter that Sheila’s talking about—campers are invited to spend the night out, sort of like a solo experience in the woods, they chop their own wood and build their own fire and maintain their fire all night, and write a letter to themselves that we then mail when they're 21. And so what does 16-year-old Sheila write to you in her vigil letter?
Oh, my goodness, well, 16-year-old Sheila was adorable, just saying! And I remember just how scared I was to be in the woods by myself. And there's a lot of references in the letter to keeping my fire, and the flashlight dying, am I going to have enough wood, but also to how important Camp was to me and what I wanted to continue to remember, through my Camp experience. But I would say that one of the most challenging parts—so there was a camper from my high school that had been with me in the same season, Luisa Alberto, and we became incredibly close after camp, in part because we could really relate to each other's experiences. We also were able to continue to stay in touch with a lot of the campers that were in New York and coming to the city, to be able to connect with each other. And so those pieces were really, really wonderful.
I think one of the hardest parts was—I mentioned I was raised by a single mother. My sister had left the house by that point, the apartment that we were living in by that point. And my mom really struggled with how close I had gotten to other people at Camp. I mean, really, really struggled with how much meaning it held for me and the fact that I had this transformative experience in her absence. And my mom also struggles with mental health, and at that point, her mental health was really spiraling to a really difficult place.
So Camp became a source of tension in my household, so much so that I really, really wanted to return for a second season and Mary Murphy was the director at the time—I had applied—and sadly my mom called Mary and said, “She's not allowed to go.” And that was such a painful experience. I felt so robbed of the opportunity to have a place in this space where I was able to get away from a lot of the pain that I lived with in my home, and I was not allowed to go. So that was really, really difficult.
What was beautiful about it was that it did not keep me from being able to maintain the connections with the people that I did meet in that first season. And then in college, I was able to become a counselor at CRS Europe for three years, and that felt wonderful. That was a time where I was able to decide what I wanted and what role I wanted Camp to play in my life. The community that I built at Camp in terms of friends, in terms of my friendship with Luisa, were really ways that I was able to survive through a very challenging time of my life.
And I know that you ended up at Amherst College. And I wondered, I mean, I know that my own experience at Camp opened my eyes to college opportunities. And we actually visited Amherst.
Yes.
Did that play any role in your decision making process about college?
I think it did. So, I was able to, with a group of Camp alum, visit—I'm trying to remember if we visited… we visited Williams College we visited Amherst, and I’m not remembering what others we went to. But just even the opportunity to be able to go to different campuses, you know? Now working at a higher education institution, I see tours with, you know, high schoolers and their parents, and that was not something that was available to me with my biological family. And then I got to go with Camp to do a weekend, and that's where I fell in love with Amherst, where I decided that that's where I wanted to go to school. I was also incredibly grateful to have gotten a full scholarship there, which allowed that to be an option, because otherwise I can't possibly imagine.
But connecting with campers and sort of talking with fellow campers about the places they were looking at for college, and the expectations that they had for themselves, definitely influenced how I thought about college. Prior to that, to me, it was just like, “College, period.” It doesn't matter where, it doesn’t matter how—just I want to be able to get my bachelor's after high school. But being able to have guidance and what that process looks like, and what kinds of questions to ask, and just knowing that fellow campers were aspiring to go to these particular types of schools, I think definitely influenced where I hoped to be at that point.
Yes, I feel like what you're describing, like this diversity of the camper body is not just about like, what countries people are from, or what parts of the U.S. they're from. But it's also a spectrum of socioeconomic backgrounds, and, you know, families who, you know, end up being first generation college, whereas, you know, some people have the privilege of coming from families where the parents also have, you know, attended school. Just being able to have that diversity of lived experiences and sort of intergenerational lived experiences allows this layer of learning to happen, you know?
Sort of like what you're describing is, there were campers there who were able to speak about this future in a different way, like the types of colleges and the types of opportunity, and knowing that you had a choice, and that there's, you know, sort of limitless possibilities. I think that for other students who have had a little more privilege, being able to be exposed to struggles that people have lived through and be more humble, you know, that impacts them too.
And so by having this diversity of lived experiences at Camp, because we don't just limit it, don't actually do income qualifications—I truly believe that it's actually a benefit of our program, that it's not something that we should change, but that everyone who is involved gets something out of learning what it's like to live a different path—a different way.
Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And connecting with people for whom that was the case really opened my eyes to things that I don't think I would have been exposed to otherwise.
And, so sort of meandering to your chosen path now as a psychologist, what were some of the steps along the way so from Amherst to—what were some of the next steps for you, before you landed in your career?
Yeah, at Amhurst those three seasons at CRS Europe where while I was in college. That's another I think opportunity that alone that as a camper, being a counselor at Stendis [in Denmark], this allowed me to travel in a way that I would not have had that access to either. So when I would schedule my flight to go to camp, I also sort of planned my trip back a couple of weeks after Camp had ended, and I visited campers from my season. I went to visit Magda in Sweden and Anna in Finland and traveled with Anna to different parts of Europe. And it was just, to be able to have these connections that, A, were still so alive, and it felt like we had never left camp. And to be able to have the opportunity to travel in a way that certainly outside of immigrating, I had not experienced with our family, was also I think, a point of sort of access that I give Camp a great deal of credit for.
I then took a year off after college and applied for counseling psychology programs, I ended up going to graduate school at Columbia University in New York. And there, continued with my passion of wanting to understand the psychological experience of different cultures, particularly of oppressed cultures in this country. And that is an aspect of the work that I do now, that is incredibly important to me. Social justice, I find, is what feeds me—what feeds my sense of purpose, but also my role as a parent and my role as a therapist and my role as someone who is a leader.
And what keeps you still involved? Like what is your desire to still stay involved in what we do at Camp Rising Sun?
That's a really good question. I find that this was an experience that was a catalyst in my life, and I am incredibly grateful for the opportunities that it has provided moving forward. And so there's a part of me that would like to make sure that that opportunity continues for others, and so that's the piece that I really—it gives me chills to be able to think about the number of people in generations that have been able to access this gift. And my hope is that, that continues for as long as possible.
Some of the work is coming full circle. So some of this, you know—you've gone on this path to become a psychologist focused on cultural competence and social justice. And you're actually giving that work back to LAJF right now, and I wondered if you wanted to talk a little bit about the work that you're doing with us internally to help us continue growing as an organization, and as a group of individuals?
I do feel like it's come full circle, in that so many of the seeds that I think for me were planted at camp—nd again, you know, I may not have been able to put into words at the time that these are some little things that I was learning—but that continued to grow through experiences and through those connections: the importance of connecting with people, and reducing the impact that harmful systems have on people who are oppressed. So what what brought me to this work initially was in really being able to better understand the experiences of people who are oppressed, and also realizing that in order for that justice to take place, what is really needed is for everyone to have a better understanding of ways in which these systems dehumanize us all. I am really glad to be doing that work with LAJF and someone who I connected to way back when in 1996.
We're really grateful for your leadership on that work, and I know that it will, when we're through, it will leave us in a much better place. As we wrap up, Sheila, I'm wondering what advice might 16 year old Sheila give to you today?
Hmm… Well, I had the opportunity to dig up the letter that I wrote. So she writes, “Remember: If you could stay in the woods by yourself all night, you can do anything. Don't forget”—and this is amazing to me because I don't I don't know what I meant by this, but it's so telling of what I do right now—“Don't forget confidentiality in any relationship is really important.”
Wow! That’s so interesting. Like some crystal ball thinking there.
Right? Yes!
“When we go back to school, you're going to be the Vice President of Nyack High School. If you're reading this letter, that means you're alive. And if you're alive, that means you didn't die when you left Camp, because that's what it feels like right now.” I practically had a nervous breakdown when someone left to Finland. That was a visiting camper that was only with us for two weeks.
“How am I going to handle leaving my brothers and sisters? Well, I guess you know. I really hope you're leading a happy life. Please keep in touch with me by always being a kid at heart.
Well, 16 year old Sheila had a sweet sense of humor. She was sharp, kind, witty, loving, clearly very resilient, and hardworking. And I'm glad to know 41-year-old Sheila now.
Well, thank you. Same here. So my parting words to myself were, “I love you a lot. But please don't forget to love yourself. You deserve it.”
Aww, that’s cute.
So I thank 16-year-old Sheila, and I do love my life. And I am very happy and Camp is still with me, and I do feel good about the way that I've continued to spread the Camp philosophy both in ways that are more tangible, and intangible. So I'm really, really glad for the opportunity to reflect on this experience and think about all of the ways that it continues to be alive with me today.
And what gives you hope?
The thing that gives me the most hope is my children. My children are eight and seven right now, and they are incredible environmentalists, social justice warriors—they have a language for feelings of empathy that I don't think I learned until I was at least in graduate school. And knowing that they have a footing in life that is so much more stable than anything I experienced helps me feel excited to see what Camp continues to look like for them as they grow up, and as they continue to make their own connections throughout life. But to be able to watch them grow—without question is the thing that gives me the most hope.
Well, Sheila, thank you very much for spending this time with us. And I look forward to your leadership and you have a wonderful day. I never know how to end these things!
Thank you Helene! I really, really appreciate the opportunity.
I hope this series has inspired you to contribute positively to the world around you, adding to the lives of others in need and encouraging you to reflect. In our next and last episode we will be flipping the script: I will be the guest and Elizabeth Hudak, one of our recent campers, will be our host. I hope you enjoy.
About Dr. Sheila:
Dr. Sheila Graham attended Camp Rising Sun as a camper in 1996, later serving three years as a counselor at CRS Europe in Stendis, Denmark. She earned her B.A. in Psychology and Black Studies from Amherst College in 2003, and her Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from Columbia University in 2010.
Dr. Sheila has focused her career on reducing the harmful impact that establishment structures have on marginalized identities, while working to bridge the gap between underserved and privileged communities in order to promote inclusivity and understanding. She has carried out much of this work at university counseling centers, and she currently serves as the Associate Director for Social Justice at Loyola University in Baltimore, Maryland.
Dr. Sheila contributed her expertise to LAJF’s Camp Outside the Gender Binary and Heteronormativity in February. She is a board member of the Maryland chapter of the ACLU.