What My Mother Gave Me

There's a photo I keep coming back to. My mother, glasses low on her nose, pencil in hand, completely absorbed in her own thoughts. She was the first women in her family to graduate from college and earn a master's degree, in early childhood development, back in the 1950s. Looking at this image now, I don't see a woman studying for a degree. I see a woman focusing on what she believed.

My mother, deep in thought, in the years she was building the ideas she'd spend her life living out.

What she believed was simple, and it shaped everything that came after: kids emotions and feelings matter first. Before the lesson, before the grades, before anything else, there must be room for how a child actually feels about themselves.

She lived that belief as the director of a nursery school, as a Director at the Alliance for the Mentally Ill, and she lived it at home with me and my brother. I think of another photo, much older and softer at the edges, found when cleaning out our family home, my mother's arm around me in our yard when I was a child, sunlight coming through the trees behind us. That's not a posed photograph. That's a woman who paid attention.

Mom's arm around me in our yard. A small moment, and the whole philosophy in one frame.

I didn't understand until much later how much that attention shaped me, not just as her daughter, but as an artist, and eventually as the person who built Tutor Doctor of North Jersey. Every piece of art I create still asks the same question my mother asked without ever saying it out loud: what's happening beneath the surface? Every student who walks through Tutor Doctor's door gets met with that same belief. Learning is never just academic. It's tied to how a child feels about themselves first.

As families head back into the school year this month, I find myself thinking of her more than usual. Report cards and test scores will come. At the same time, the real work, the work she taught me, starts somewhere quieter than that.

I look at a photo of the three of us back when Mom was still alive; my mother, myself, and my daughter Carly, and I see the same attention passed down twice. Three generations, one belief: how you feel matters first.

My mother, myself, and my daughter Carly. Three generations, one belief passed quietly down.

There's more to learn here, both the art and the woman behind it. Visit beyondtheyeart.com to explore my full body of work and SHOP signed, limited-edition prints.