At nine years old, Sabrina Spence learned that words could save her.
She was in fourth grade when her teacher assigned the class to memorize a poem. Sabrina chose Langston Hughes’ “Mother to Son,” a reflection on perseverance — a reminder that life “ain’t been no crystal stair,” but you keep climbing anyway.
At that moment, Sabrina’s own climb had already begun.
In the spring of 2009, her grandmother noticed a lump on Sabrina’s cheek. Within days, a series of tests led her to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital®, where she was diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare cancer that develops in soft tissue.
Even at nine, Sabrina understood the gravity of her diagnosis. Cancer was not abstract. Her aunt had died of breast cancer just months earlier, and another uncle had worked decades before at St. Jude as one of its first Black pharmacists.
“I was very aware of what cancer was — and what cancer could do,” Sabrina has said.
A Little Soldier With a Notebook
Sabrina endured surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. After a tracheotomy, she woke unable to speak, terrified as she tried to communicate with her grandmother. She spent weeks hospitalized and nearly a year in intense treatment.
Through it all, Sabrina carried notebooks with her everywhere.
Writing became the one thing she could do entirely on her own. While her body was exhausted — often nauseous, weak, and in pain — poetry gave her a place to pour out fear, grief, and confusion.
“It’s an interesting feeling,” she later reflected, “to know that you are simultaneously growing, but also in the process of dying. I could feel my body at war with itself.”
As she recited Hughes’ poem again and again for homework, Sabrina began to fall in love with the way words worked — their rhythm, their weight, their ability to hold emotion without explanation. It was then that she knew poetry would always be part of her life.
Growing Beyond Survival
At ten, Sabrina had her first poem published in her school’s literary magazine. She kept writing as she navigated survivorship — learning that the impact of cancer does not end when treatment does.
At fourteen, she celebrated five years of clear scans, a major milestone for childhood cancer survivors. That same year, she learned radiation therapy had damaged her hearing in one ear. Years later, vision complications surfaced — another late effect of treatment.
Still, Sabrina thrived.
She excelled academically, joined honor societies, ran cross-country, fenced, performed in theater, and eventually became editor-in-chief of the same literary magazine that first published her work. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English and creative writing from Washington University in St. Louis, joined Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.®, and returned to Memphis to pursue her Master of Fine Arts at the University of Memphis.
Now 25, Sabrina teaches freshman composition and prepares to defend a thesis exploring grief, Black womanhood, the South — and poetry.
“I love sharing my words,” she says. “Creating connections. Making people feel something.”
A Legacy Larger Than One Story
Sabrina’s journey is deeply personal, but it also reflects the foundation St. Jude was built upon.
When St. Jude opened in Memphis in 1962, it became the first fully integrated children’s hospital in the South — treating patients regardless of race, religion, or ability to pay, and hiring Black doctors, nurses, and researchers at a time when segregation was still the norm.
That commitment shaped lives.
Early research at St. Jude included studies on sickle cell disease, a condition disproportionately affecting Black communities and long neglected elsewhere. Physicians like Dr. Rudolph Jackson, one of St. Jude’s first Black doctors, helped pioneer treatments that would be shared worldwide.
This legacy of equity and inclusion is what allowed children like Sabrina not only to survive, but to imagine a future beyond illness.
“St. Jude Lays Stones for Streets of Safe Passage”
In 2022, Sabrina returned to St. Jude not as a patient, but as a poet. She performed an original spoken-word piece titled “When I Was Nine,” reflecting on fear, faith, and the fragile courage of childhood.
The poem ends with a line that captures both gratitude and legacy:
“St. Jude lays stones for streets of safe passage
so kids like me can grow up to be adults like me.”
Sabrina credits the village that carried her — her mother, aunt, grandmother, and the institution that refused to turn her away.
“I’m not who I am today without St. Jude,” she says.
A poet. A survivor.
A living reminder that Black legacy lives here — in resilience, in care, and in the power of words.
