Secretary of State Shemia Fagan’s climb to political and personal success has been an uphill battle, but her challenging childhood and family struggles helped, rather than hurt, her path to victory, and taught her what it means to truly “be somebody’s somebody.”
A Challenging Childhood
Fagan grew up in Dufur, Oregon, a small farming community in Wasco County. Her parents split up when she was only 18 months old, and her father became a single parent, caring for her and her older brothers. Her mother battled addiction for years and went through some very dark periods, even becoming hooked on meth for a period of time.
Despite her mother’s issues, Fagan and her brothers still visited their mother growing up.
“He [her father] felt it was important that we had a relationship with her despite her sickness,” Fagan said.
This meant that she witnessed some of her mother’s most challenging times. Fagan even recalls visiting her while she was living under someone’s porch, and she knows she lived under the Burnside Bridge in Portland for a period.
Fagan, her father, and her brothers had their own struggles, too. One summer, she thought they were on a long camping trip, when in reality, they had been evicted from their home and had nowhere else to go.
About her childhood, Fagan said, “It was definitely a challenge.”
Her brothers would go on to also struggle with addiction – currently, one is in recovery while the other has been sober for about five or so years. Fagan herself was never directly afflicted by addiction, for which she is thankful.
Fagan’s ‘Somebodies’
Fagan’s father didn’t remarry until she was in high school, meaning she mostly didn’t have a stable mother figure in her home throughout her childhood. However, she was lucky enough to have multiple maternal figures in her life as she grew up, including women from her church, women whose kids she babysat, female teachers, and her friends’ mothers.
These pseudo-mothers helped Fagan thrive despite her home-life struggles.
She said, “There were kind of some maternal figures in my life that just really sustained me.”
This sustainment in part led to Fagan pursuing higher education.
In 2003, she attended Northwest Nazarene University in Nampa, Idaho and earned her Bachelor of Arts degree. With dreams of becoming a preacher for United Methodist Church, she went on to attend Divinity School at Boston University with a full scholarship.
After her first semester, however, Fagan realized that though she enjoyed the ability of preachers to impact and change others’ lives, the one-on-one social work part of the job was not for her. Public service, she believed, would allow her to care for others on a macro-scale.
She started law school in 2006 at the Willamette University College of Law and earned her Juris Doctor from Lewis & Clark College Law School in 2009. That same year, Emerge Oregon, an organization that helps Democratic women run for and achieve office, was significantly helpful to Fagan.
“Emerge Oregon was hugely impactful to me,” Fagan said. “…I got accepted to the program and, unexpectedly, it changed the course of my life.”
Prior to a bout of young men who were elected to office in 2008, Fagan didn’t realize a young woman such as herself could achieve office. Emerge Oregon allowed her to not only realize her dream but make it a reality.
Fagan became a member of the Oregon House of Representatives from the 51st district in 2013 and served until 2017. In 2019, she assumed office as a member of the Oregon Senate from the 24th district. On Jan. 11 of 2021, Fagan will take office as Oregon’s Secretary of State.
Being ‘Somebody’s Somebody’ and Becoming
Fagan is a big advocate of “being somebody’s somebody.” She recalled a recent example of this, when on a rainy dark night in the middle of traffic, she saw a woman, who appeared to be on drugs, being kicked out of someone’s car. Fagan pulled behind the car and turned on her hazards as other vehicles whizzed by, making sure the woman safely got to the side of the road.
“I see somebody like that, and I think that’s somebody’s daughter, that’s somebody’s sister, that could even be somebody’s mom,” she said. “It just gives you a different sense of humanity of people.”
When she saw this woman on the road, Fagan was reminded of her own mother.
“I hope people were kind to her and saw her as a person, because she was – she was my mom,” she said.
Fagan had many “somebody’s” in her life growing up, and for those who live in similar situations to her own childhood, she has sage advice.
“Accept the love and support and grace from the other adults in your life who are willing to give it,” she said. “I probably had a dozen women at different points in my life, even if it was only for a couple years, that were just a really nurturing force in my life. It didn’t matter that they hadn’t been there since I was born, it didn’t matter that they weren’t going to be there forever – for that period of time, they really stabilized my life.”
Something else that has stabilized Fagan in her day-to-day life is journaling. She has kept multiple accounts of her life since she was in elementary school, and it has always been helpful in motivating and grounding her.
“With journaling, it’s not just a ‘then me’ and a ‘now me,’ but I’ve watched, in some ways, a daily transition of the way that my thoughts have changed,” she said. “…Journaling for me, it’s that line of continuity.”
She recalled Michelle Obama’s sentiment from her novel Becoming, “You’re always becoming, you’re never arriving, you’re always becoming.”
“Keeping that continuity in your life, I think for me gives me the hope that in all the ways in which I am imperfect and see the world imperfectly and am ‘unwoke’ – all those things today, there’s going to be a day later where I look back and I know more than I did,” Fagan said. “It always gives me that sense of growth and becoming.”
By Cara Nixon
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