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Historical Note

Her Mother’s Secret is loosely based on the life of the author’s aunt, Sadie Ellis Garland Dreikurs. The real-life Sadie was born in Chicago on February 28, 1900, to Jacob and Lena Ellis. As a child she grew up in Chicago’s Maxwell Street neighborhood, where her father worked as a butcher. She took art classes at Hull House, and later met her first husband, the artist Leon Garland, there. After his death in 1941 she trained as a social worker under Jane Addams. In 1943 she married Rudolph Dreikurs, an internationally known psychiatrist. She traveled extensively with him and played an important role in the development of the field of art therapy. In 1986 Sadie published a book titled Cows Can Be Purple: My Life and Art Therapy, which is still in print. In it readers will find a lengthy autobiographical essay which provides further details about her life. Sadie Dreikurs died in Wilmette, Illinois on February 25, 1996.

Barbara Garland Polikoff wrote the following essay about her Aunt Sadie.