LaDonna Harrison grew up in northern Minnesota in a three room house without an indoor bathroom. She and her younger sister slept in the living room while Mom and Dad had the only bedroom. They lived off the land: her father hunted and caught fish; her mother planted a garden and spent the hot humid month of August canning vegetables and fruit for the winter. They were poor and uneducated, but LaDonna didn’t fully understand until college, when she first heard the term, that she was from a “lower social economic level.”

Harrison has over the years completed three masters degrees, the course work for a PhD in Depth Psychology (MA English, MA Rhetoric, MA/ABD Depth Psychology) and 30 years of experience teaching writing and workshops at U. of MN, U of CA at Santa Barbara, Lake Superior College, MN, Carnegie Mellon U., PA and St. John’s Seminary, CA. She is a member of the Palm Springs Writer’s Guild, has facilitated a weekly writer’s critique group and has spoken about the grief process at spiritual retreats. Now retired from university teaching, she live in Palm Springs, CA with her husband Al Miller, the Great Dane Abby and the Maine Coon cat Louie. LaDonna’s daughter Deanie and granddaughter Chloe live near her.

Her essay entitled “Where’s the Juice” appears in The Magic of Memoir: Inspiration for the Writing JourneyEdited by Linda Joy Myers and Brooke Warner of She Writes Press.

Our Divide: Two Sides of Locked in Syndrome is the story of the other side, the side of LaDonna the pregnant wife of Cleve, who at age twenty-seven, is struck down by an obstruction in the brain stem leaving him with locked-in syndrome, a rare neurological disorder that causes most victims to remain mute and paralyzed.  Unlike Jean-Dominique Bauby (1997) in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Cleve “locked in” his unresponsive body is unable to sit up in a wheel chair or communicate by blinking an eye.

Our Divide is a beautifully written, honest accounting of the experience of a family member watching a loved one suffer. Harrison delivers both a peek into the world of a unique other and an intimate view of one young woman’s grieving process. This heart-breaking story braids a grief narrative, coming of age and survival narrative into the memoir genre, creating a genuine, honest portrayal of one woman’s mistakes and courage while learning how to take responsibility and create a life for herself. This memoir embraces sadness and trauma, life lessons, love and hope. Readers will be swept away.