Donita Ellison - Art Educator and Aesthetic Realism Associate

 What Are Mothers and Daughters 
Hoping For? 

By Beverly Burk and Donita Ellison 
Special to The Examiner

We are a fortunate mother and daughter to be learning how to see each other with new depth and respect ­ and love each other more deeply than ever ­ through our study of Aesthetic Realism. This kind education, founded in 1941 by the American educator and philosopher, Eli Siegel, enables people to make sense of the biggest questions of our lives. Mr. Siegel explained that the deepest desire in every person is "to like the world on an honest basis," and said that "the family should be the first point in liking the world." 

Not knowing this, we once didn't understand why we could be close and cozy one moment, then distant at others. And as we spoke about friends and relatives we often complained about them, saying for example "That's the way she is, what can you expect?" or "Dad's late for dinner again," ­ which gave each other the message that the world and people were one big disappointment and we were above it all. This, we learned, is contempt ­ "the addition to self through the lessening of something else" ­ which Mr. Siegel described as the most hurtful desire in every person and family. It was our contempt for the world and for each other that made us often feel mean, angry and empty. 

In Eli Siegel's 1949 lecture titled Mind and Mothers, he explained what I, Beverly, needed to know as a young mother. "The first thing that a mother should do is see herself and the child in relation to everything." Like many mothers, I wanted my daughter to have opportunities I didn't have, and encouraged her expression through music and dance. But I also wanted to have her for only myself, often feeling "Now I have someone to need and care for just me!" At times, cruelly, I dismissed even her father, my husband Don Ellison, with the message "She's mine". 

Years later in an Aesthetic Realism consultation, which I had by telephone from my home in Missouri, I was asked this kind question that every mother needs to hear: "Do you own your daughter or does she belong to the whole world?" This opened my eyes to the mistake I had made. My consultants encouraged me to want to know how Donita saw the world and people ­ her interest in art, books she read, the students she was teaching as a high school teacher, the men she dated, her father. 

Like daughters throughout time, I, Donita, took my mother for granted ­ she was chauffeur, cook, laundress, and simply "there" to do what I needed. I didn't know what Mr. Siegel explained: "It is a very useful and beautiful thing to be a mother, but motherhood is a phase of being a person. No person was ever born a mother. You are a person first." I didn't see Beverly Sue Burk as a person first, but as "my mom." I had a new sense of wonder when my consultants asked: "Do you think a novel could be written about the life of Beverly Burk that would affect people?" I had never thought about her life in that way, yes it could! They encouraged me to write a soliloquy of Beverly at age 18 and as I did, I saw she had hopes and fears, similar to mine and all people ­ thoughts about young men, her parents, her uncles fighting in World War II, the patients she cared for as a nurse, her future, herself. I saw that the way I was self-centered and dismissing was contempt, and that she was a person in her own right, with many full, rich years of life experience before I was ever born. 

Our consultants saw how strengthening it would be for us to write a note to each other every day saying one way we did each other good. They were right! For example, Beverly wrote: "Donita, you did me good today by being interested in my work at the nursing home and what I see about it that I like." And Donita wrote: "Today you did me good by encouraging me to be more sincere and less of a flirt. I like your straightforwardness. I need it!" 

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