By Lani Ka’ahumanu
I met Professor “Just call me Sally” Gearhart in a Basic Feminism 101 class in 1976, the year the Women Studies B.A. program was launched at San Francisco State University. She, the lesbian feminist separatist and her co-teacher Mina Caufield a communist feminist and a heterosexual married mother of five children. They eloquently taught/discussed their view of feminism, patriarchy, sex, race, and class, all while modeling respect and love for one another.
Sitting halfway up the stairs I watched women of all ages come into the lecture hall looking for a familiar face and a seat. The room was buzzing. Many of us, including me, were out or coming out as lesbians. We were woman-identified women loving women. Some of us were womyn loving wimmin, others liked wemoon. I’d taken “Women and Madness” the previous semester, but none had prepared me for Sally’s lecture—
TYRANNY IN THE DELIVERY ROOM
Sally
Preacher of the hour
Loving every minute of her time with us
Poised and self-assured
Breaking down the patriarchy
Pink and blue
Dolls and trucks
Sex roles
Sexism
Tomgirls and sissies
Heterosexism
Marriage motherhood
Men’s control of women’s bodies
Women’s lives
Violence
She had the whole class in her hands
and held us asking
Who are we separate from men?
Her deep expressive voice
Matched her dramatic physical gestures and facial expressions
Her large hands emphasizing each point
She came for the patriarchy again from another direction
broke it down and put it back together
It’s not like I hadn’t heard some of this before
It was her full-bodied passion
and awe-inspiring performance
sparking the possibility, NO the probability
of a lesbian feminist revolution
Nothing would stop us
I heard the call
I was ready to run down the aisle
She was the role model I was looking for
In the decade before I met Sally, I was a happily married full-time suburban housewife and mother. I married my high school sweetheart in 1963—I was 19. College was not on my dance card. I’d enrolled in high school business courses, so I’d have skills “to find a job in case my husband died and I was left to raise the children.” I looked forward to stepping into my career and was determined to do my best version of wife and mother.
Six years later, in 1969, my husband was teaching at the high school where we met, our son was in kindergarten, and our daughter was three-and-a-half. I canned and sewed. I loved being a room mother at my son’s and then my daughter’s school. My husband and I had a great relationship. I was active with Another Mother for Peace, supported the United Farm Workers grape boycott and the Black Panther Free Breakfast program. I’d started taking a night class every semester at the community college. I remember feeling happy and fulfilled—I’d done it all.
I paid close attention to feminist authors appearing on talk shows. I was curious, interested in, and quickened by what they were saying. Feminism began making sense. I traded in my Mrs. for Ms.—an edgy radical move branding me a feminist.
In the early ’70s, I started crying for no apparent reason. I was struggling and confused. Neither one of us knew why until one day my husband and dearest friend said he’d figured out why I’d been crying. “You’ve never had a life of your own. You need to leave. I’ll take the children; you can’t do what you need to do if they’re with you.” As soon as I heard it, I knew he was right. We’d grown up to be very different people. We did our best to take care of our children and each other. He loved me and we let go.
I was then 31 years old and living on my own for the first time in my life. Leaving my children was [and still is] the hardest thing I’ve ever done. At the end of the kids’ school year, I moved to the city and transferred to San Francisco State University. And after seven years of college, I registered as a full-time student.
For me
Women Studies
most especially Sally
made sense out of my life
gave me permission
encouraged me
to be
unapologetically
my self
a woman
Separate from the roles, the rules and
the assumed selflessness
I switched my major to Women Studies
Sally and I became friends when we served on the Women Studies Hiring Committee. I was a student rep. We had long meetings and dynamite discussions. Sally invited me to come up to Women’s Land north of SF. She and several other lesbians had purchased property and were creating a women’s community to explore what it meant to live as free of the constraints of patriarchy as possible. I arrived in my VW bus. There she was, 40 ft away swinging an ax, splitting logs for her wood stove. She left the ax in the log, waved, and came to greet me with a big smile and hug. Her accessibility and open heart supported me.
Sally was the first out lesbian in the U.S. to be offered a tenure-track position. She put that position on the line in 1978 when she and Harvey Milk led the successful fight against Proposition 6 which would have banned homosexuals from teaching in California.
Sally was an action figure
I wanted to be like her
She was my hero and guide
12 years older than me
She was like a sister
And in time my cherished friend and mentor
~ ~ ~
After 11 years of college, I graduated in 1979 with a B.A. in Women Studies. I was the first person in my family to graduate from college. I attended the March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights and left the city to heal my exhaustion.
Eighteen months later, when I returned to my beloved San Francisco lesbian family of friends/community, I knew what was in store for me—in the interim I’d fallen in love with a bisexual man, an anti-sexist community organizer. In 1980, two weeks into our relationship, we began talking about organizing a feminist bisexual revolution.
I came out as a lesbian-identified bisexual to clarify where I’d stand if the shit hit the fan. This identity assuaged my internalized biphobia and my deep sense of loss. The harsh personal attacks, public humiliations, and shunning stunned me. I visited Sally. She asked, “Is it true—you’re bisexual?” I told her I was, and nothing had changed, not my woman-centered identity, not my feminist politics. This is my community. I wasn’t going anywhere. She listened and heard what I was saying, saw I was happy, loved me, and wanted to understand, but she didn’t. She “needed time to think about it.” As I sorted through my coming out process, Sally hung in there, asked me hard questions, and kept listening. Unlike so many others, Sally engaged me, loved me, and never doubted me. I sent her the bisexual articles I published in the lesbian and gay press. She told me I was hitting my stride and cheered me on.
When BI ANY OTHER NAME: Bisexual People Speak Out (Alyson, 1991) was garnering rave reviews and heading towards its third printing, Loraine Hutchins and I—as editors—were catapulted into the national spotlight.
Email exchange:
May 21, 1991
Sally,
How do we balance the token, the pioneer, the pedestal
with the struggle to be truly free our selves
inside ourselves, and with others?
How do we learn to be graceful and gracious?
How do we spark and shine publicly
without being seen as conceited and full of ourselves?
Oh sweetheart, remember this is all a dance, all the same thing.
You remember by asking.
It is a balance, yes,
but you know already that love is what is happening to you.
You know when you’re embracing love and when you’re not.
I’ve seen you for years now. You’re already doing it
and someday you’ll believe it.
Trust your loving self. We can reflect ourselves back and forth to each other
until it’s clear that there’s only one, and love is.
Journal:
July 25, 1991
Sally calls
leaving me a message
I can hear her voice on my machine
I run down the hall to say hello
to say oh Sally how are you
we laugh, she asks
how are you doing in your hero stage
are you enjoying it
is it fun
she of course is moving into her
sage period
she says she’s not quite there yet
it’s not something you get
she says it will come over her
she doesn’t know
if she’s ready
her voice filling me
with love, esteem,
inspiration, confidence
she is proud of me
and appreciates how far I’ve come
My life took off. I didn’t see her for several years. We emailed and called each other occasionally. When I finally had some real down time, I made my way up to Willits, CA. Sally loved the sun. We sat naked, she in full sun while I was just a few feet away sitting on a chair under an umbrella in the shade. We talked about the latest happenings in our lives and always my writing. When Sally noticed me glance down there, she immediately pointed to her vulva and declared, “Them’s not gray hairs honey, they’re cobwebs!” I thought we’d pee our chairs!
~ ~ ~
I don’t remember who or exactly when someone told me Sally had Alzheimer’s, but two days later we were sitting across from one another laughing and catching up like we’d always done. At 85 she was as energetic, and sure-footed as ever. Sally asked me to visit again; we made a date.
On the drive home, I thought about visiting her one weekend a month. I wanted to be there with her. I would be an Alz-doula for her journey. I’d never heard of such a thing but losing your memory is a form of dying separate from your body dying. You’re aware of losing your awareness. I would want a safe place to think/talk about all that if I needed to. I would want a safe place to be myself even as I was forgetting who I was. I would want a safe place to let go and be who I was becoming. I would want a safe place with someone who shared lived memories with me and never got tired of hearing me ask or tell. I would want the safety and comfort of an old friend who held a joyful positive space filled with the possibility of laughter at any moment, who could look me in the eye without sadness, or fear, or grief, or pity, or drama, and love me.
Three weeks later, we had easy fun. I told her I wanted to visit one weekend a month. “For how long?” she asked. Meeting her eyes, I said,“For as long as you’re here. It’s an honor and a blessing to accompany you.” She thanked me.
“I love you, Sally Miller Gearhart.”
“I love you, Lani Ka’ahumanu.”
This was the only time around me she ever gave a nod to her illness.
As the months turned into years, I witnessed her courage, facing her fear of the unknown, letting go to the unraveling, and the loss of her memoried-self.
Sally Miller Gearhart (1931-2021)
A time will come–
Do I know you? Have we met before? You’re so familiar.
We must have known each other in another life.
And we’ll laugh and laugh
And be fast friends
Again…
Parts of this essay were previously published in Sinister Wisdom 126, Fall 2022 and at https://sallymillergearhart.net/sallys-story.. Reprinted with permission.
Lani Ka’ahumanu lives rurally on the rural coast just north of San Francisco in the U.S. She is kanaka maoli kupuna / Bi+ OLD and care-giving her adult son who lives with her.
