From trashbag to haute couture: Pastor creates new twist to walking the runway
30th January 2012 · 0 Comments
By Valentine Pierce
Contributing Writer
Overcoming adversity has been a standard in Sharon Denise Julien’s life since early childhood when she struggled with obesity.
“I was the only obese child in the whole school so I learned how to deal with differences at a very young age,” Julien said.
At 18, after her first year in college, she was crippled in an automobile accident that put her in a wheelchair and took away her dancing.
“The tools and principles and my faith in Christ had been laid so well. I used those to deal with being handicapped,” Julien told The Louisiana Weekly.
Today, the 44-year-old has moved from wheelchair to walker to cane and in March will receive a hip replacement. But more than what she has gained is what she has given.
For eight years, Julien’s nonprofit, Revitalizing Our Society Effectively (R.O.S.E.), has helped young women overcome adversity by teaching them to remove the trash from their lives to reveal the treasures. The lure? A fashion show where high fashion is created with plastic, beads, hot glue guns, a sewing machine and sheer imagination.
To walk the runway young women commitment to the 10-week self-improvement program. “If they show up, they can attend,” said Julien. It can be a painful but Julien says it has a 91 percent graduate rate.
“One girl was just bebopping down the street. She had a uniqueness about her.” Julien asked the young woman if she wanted to be a model and gave her a flyer.
“Each individual has trash — physical, mental, emotional— that needs to be taken out. Trash starts smelling. After awhile it becomes hazardous. Then you begin to self-destruct.”
Julien has strivers and survivors. Strivers have all the things life affords but don’t take advantage of them. (They) need something just as the survivors do, Julien explained.
The process: First week: Identify your trash and begin journaling. Second week: Be willing to throw it out. “Some people are not willing to throw their trash out,” Julien said.
“As they journal, there is a lot of crying, weeping,” Julien added. “My strivers break down and realize they have privileges that they should do more with.
“In one session, I said, ‘God, what is going on here? He said, ‘Tell them you’re sorry although you (did not) do this to them and they’ll be healed.’ So I said, ‘I’m sorry that you were left uncovered and that uncle, that foster care brother — molested you. I’m sorry your mother was on drugs and she left you, that you don’t know your father.
“A shield came off. The women melted. “My strivers saw as all these young women began to break down. It was miracle working. Young girls that did not have the same struggles started comforting because it was too many girls for me to comfort at once.”
Third week: Willing to be reconstructed. Fourth week: Rebuilding your blueprint. Fifth week: Faith. “Have faith that you are going to make it,” Julien said. “It’s not the program, it’s you. Fashion is nothing unless somebody puts it on. A dress is nothing. A hairdo is nothing until it has somebody to rock it, wear it, own it. “Your essence needs to come through.”
Sixth week: Getting your blueprint from the creator. “That’s where fashion comes in,” Julien said. ‘Faith without works is dead’ so I show them how to work it. God tells us specifically, ‘This is how you shall fashion it.’ He told Noah to make an ark. He (Noah) had never seen an ark. I tell people, ‘Do not be fearful. Noah … didn’t have a reference.
“Look at me,” Julien continued. “I’m short, fat, dark, bald-headed and cripple, I need to get me a van, put a Jheri Curl in my hair and sit in front of the TV, according to society. NO! I’m fabulous.”
Seventh week: Maintaining your faith. In John Chapter 15, He says, ‘If you bear fruit, I am going to prune you and if you don’t, I’m still going to cut you off.’ The pruning feels the same as being cut off,” Julien explains, “so you can bear more fruit. They start losing things. They start being stretched. I call it my Mr. Miyagi moment because Karate Kid didn’t understand. I show them how to take that negative and make it into a positive. So if (a girl) was molested repeatedly (she) has the spirit of endurance. There’s something greater inside her.”
Eighth week: Prepare to take flight. “They have to own their vision and be prepared to run. God told Habakkuk, ‘Write the vision down and make it plain so that those who read it will run with it.’ I show them how to see themselves already achieving. The scripture says, in Ecclesiastes, ‘Better is the end of a day than the beginning thereof.’ You have to see yourself at the end.”
Ninth week: That takes two courses because a lot of people have a hard time articulating now that they have all these gifts and talents. I show them how to narrow in on them.”
Tenth week: Take flight. One young woman took flight and cut her first single. “I knew I needed something to identify what I had within,” said 31-year-old Latoyua Simmons. “I had never experienced anything like that— identifying your trash. You think these things are bad, not knowing (they) can turn around and work for you,” Simmons said.
“At first it was hard, a shock to dig that deep, pull up all this trash, put it on paper. I realized some people had been through way worse than I’ve been through. If they can get through it, I can too.
“I’m like a butterfly,” she concluded. “Transformed. It’s an awesome program that helps you know that no matter what you’ve faced, you can still fulfill your dreams. The program changes young women; they see themselves in a different light; they know they are valuable.”
Brittany Boudreaux, 24, was introduced through a friend. “I thought it was going to be all fun and fashion,” Boudreaux said. “The program identifies everything that you try to forget. If you hide something it is going to resurface until you deal with it,” Boudreaux continued. “You identify problems, deal with them, and turn them into treasures. Once you find out your self-worth, some situations you’re just not going to take any more.”
Boudreaux wants to be a personal trainer to help women and girls, find themselves. “A lot of people are not confident in who they are and how they look. You need to be comfortable with who you are and be healthy about it,” Boudreaux said. “Some people want change but they don’t have the resources or the people to walk with them. I’m going to school so I can get the knowledge to help them. I’ll take the tools that I learned in the program and put it in my program to help others build their confidence.”
Young women aren’t the only ones benefiting from Julien’s program. When 13-year-old Devonni Campbell was five, she was with her aunt “DeDe” while her mother worked. Campbell pleaded to be in the show. That evolved into Dreaming Beyond the Sky, for girls five to 13 years old.
“The first thing she (Julien) did was ask us what we wanted to be when we grow up,” Campbell said. “Then we made dream pillows. I still sleep on mine. She taught us to go for our dreams, that we shouldn’t be afraid of anything that comes our way.”
Campbell said her younger cousins “look up to me so I have to set a good example. We have a lot of influences in San Diego so we don’t always have the best role models.
“I think it’s great. Not only does she help you identify and pursue your dream, she encourages you in school. Some girls come in with grades slipping, bad behavior at home, acting up. She bribes them,” Campbell explained. “One of the things is to be in the show — that’s a privilege. She does little stuff. She takes us out. When we go out to eat we dine — not just simple dining, etiquette.”
Campbell wanted to be an orthopedic doctor after college but a couple of years back she started in the culinary arts. “She’s (Julien) helping me grow a business, Devonni’s Deserts. Now I might want to go to culinary school after college.”
Julien explained why she developed the six-week youth program. “When I was younger we did everything. They took us everywhere. Now the school systems won’t take them anywhere. Julien takes the girls to places like Xerox where executives present a leadership conference. “It is an amazing thing to see young Black girls sitting around a corporate table.”
“I love all this but I am a pastor,” Julien concluded. “It’s my secret weapon to get Jesus to people.”
This article was originally published in the January 30, 2012 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper
