Mother's Guilt Quotes & Sayings

Tereza's mother never stopped reminding her that being a mother meant sacrificing everything. Her words had the ring of truth, backed as they were by the experience of a woman who had lost everything because of her child. Tereza would listen and believe that being a mother was the highest value in life and that being a mother was a great sacrifice. If a mother was Sacrifice personified, then a daughter was Guilt, with no possibility of redress. — Milan Kundera

The more she laughs, the more he ups the ante with his clowning. By the time he finishes he will have run through all the secret mysteries of laughter that human beings have ever understood, mobilizing everything at his disposal. There is no way for him to know how guilty it makes his mother feel, seeing such a young child go to such lengths just to wring a bit of apparent happiness from her, or that her laughter will all eventually run out. — Han Kang

I know strong cages that are narrow and difficult to avoid: the cages of love. I'm not sure if others build them, like a tailor makes clothes fitted for you, or if you make them on your own. Whether it's the love of a mother, of a child, or of a mate, all cages are made of threats and guilt. — Sibyl Von Der Schulenburg

Mother!" he cried. "Darling, sweetheart, wait!" Crumpling, she fell to the pavement. He dashed forward and fell at her side, crying, "Mamma, Mamma!" He turned her over. Her face was fiercely distorted. One eye, large and staring, moved slightly to the left as if it had become unmoored. The other remained fixed on him, raked his face again, found nothing and closed. "Wait here, wait here!" he cried and jumped up and began to run for help toward a cluster of lights he saw in the distance ahead of him. "Help, help!" he shouted, but his voice was thin, scarcely a thread of sound. The lights drifted farther away the faster he ran and his feet moved numbly as if they carried him nowhere. The tide of darkness seemed to sweep him back to her, postponing from moment to moment his entry into the world of guilt and sorrow. — Flannery O'Connor

"But even if he has been wicked," pursued Rose, "think how young he is; think that he may never have known a mother's love, or the comfort of a home; that ill-usage and blows, or the want of bread, may have driven him to herd with men who have forced him to guilt. Aunt, dear aunt, for mercy's sake, think of this, before you let them drag this sick child to a prison, which in any case must be the grave of all his chances of amendment." — Charles Dickens

My mother's dying and may not live through the week. So, yes, I'd rather die trying to save her than live with the guilt of wondering if I could have. If you can't understand caring that much for someone you love then you're one coldhearted bastard. (Abbie) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Balance is Impossible; Memories are Better. — Marci Fair

And now, restored to the status of daughter in her own home, Amina began to feel the emotions of other people's food seeping into her - because Reverend Mother doled out the curries and meatballs of intransigence, dishes imbued with the personality of their creator; Amina ate the fish salans of stubbornness and the birianis of determination. And, although Mary's pickles had a partially counteractive effect - since she had stirred into them the guilt of her heart, and the fear of discovery, so that, good as they tasted, they had the power of making those who ate them subject to nameless uncertainties and dreams of accusing fingers - the diet provided by Reverend Mother filled Amina with a kind of rage, and even produced slight signs of improvements in her defeated husband. — Salman Rushdie

The interruption did nothing but earn her a similar slap, as I'm sure she knew it would. Sometimes I wondered if my mother spoke up at the wrong time on purpose. As often as we endured my father's abuse, she had to be aware that it wouldn't save me from a beating but simply earn her one as well. Or was it that sharing my fate made her feel less guilt-ridden about those things that happened to me? — Richelle E. Goodrich

I felt like I needed to comfort both the little girl inside me and my mother, assuring them that neither of them could have prevented the rape. I didn't want my mother to blame herself and I didn't want to blame the little girl inside of me for not speaking up at the age of six. — Erin Merryn

Oh! mothers aren't fair - I mean it's not fair of nature to weigh us down with them and yet expect us to be our own true selves. The handicap's too great. All those months, when the same blood's running through two sets of veins - there's no getting away from that, ever after. Take yours. As I say, does she need to open her mouth? Not she! She's only got to let it hang at the corners, and you reek, you drip with guilt. — Henry Handel Richardson

And daughters who are so hopeless at doing the done thing and sticking to the rules are automatically paralyzed with guilt whenever they come within fifty yards of a mother like Margaret. — Susan Howatch

Later, the family, led ferociously by the father, forces Gregor into his room like a naughty child. And Gregor, for his part, has no interest in adult matters. He loathes his profession. He has no intention of finding a companion; the only woman in his life, besides his sister and mother, is the pin-up girl in the guilt frame. — Franz Kafka

Sarah's death and how it haunted you, how you were swallowed by your guilt. But your mother was at least partially responsible for how you handled that situation as well. Let's not forget that you were just a kid. With the right guidance, you might have come through that incident better." Jones — Lisa Unger

When I missed the physical body of my partner, I meditated on its parts, tossed by the waves, torn, dispersed, and deteriorated. When memories of our lives together became acute and intense, I breathed. I breathed through each wave of yearning, of regret, of guilt, of what-could-have-been. Every time I asked him, "Where are you?" A quiet voice immediately responded, "I am here. I have never left you." I did not only lose a partner. I lost my childhood all over again. I lost my soul mate. I lost the accepting father and the gentle mother that he was to me. I lost the dream of a "normal life," which I had tried so hard to achieve. Now I had to face my own mind. — Dang Nghiem

Conscience is what makes a boy tell his mother before his sister does. — Evan Esar

Got something to do with guilt,' Toro said. 'Her mother,neh?'
'Guilt. Longing. Got something to do with all of us. — Kiana Davenport

Thought: maybe this is what a mother feels like at times. When she can't help one of her children. When she has to just stand by and watch her daughter strike out on the softball field, watch her son fail at math despite whatever effort he may put in. This ache. This defining double bind of roaring, passionate protectiveness and its equal, weighty, leaden uselessness. And even the impatience with it all; and then the guilt about feeling impatient, about finding it a bit oppressive despite the immeasurable love. Maybe this is what mothering sometimes feels like, I thought. — Robin Black

Food won't go down when you know your mother didn't want you, never liked to feed you, always hated you in her rooms. You were wrong to clutch and swallow and move your mouth. You must not be flushed, layered in fat or ripe from meat or she will despise your sight. Your skeleton cries, "I make no demands, I am ashamed of my needs, I am unworthy. I'm aware of those more deserving, those with prior and urgent claims to food." Skeleton says, "My safety is in slightness, my pride is denial. My victory is no gluttony, no guilt. — Jenny Holzer

Guilt management can be just as important as time management for mothers. — Sheryl Sandberg

Given Freudian assumptions about the nature of children and the biological predestination of mothers, it is unthinkable for mothers voluntarily to leave their babies in others' care, without guilt about the baby's well-being and a sense of self-deprivation. Mothers need their babies for their own mental health, and babies need their mothers for their mental health
a reciprocal and symbiotic relationship. — Sandra Scarr

We don't need the money that badly," my mother said. "According to my sisters, we do." I slid the photograph with dollar signs toward her. Mom swung toward Grandma Frida. "Mom!" Grandma Frida's eyes got really big. "What? Don't look at me!" "You started this." Ha! Attack deflected and redirected. "I did no such thing. I'm innocent. You always blame me for everything." "You started it and you encouraged it. Now look, she's taking on murders because you're guilt-tripping her to put food on the table. And what kind of message does this send?" "A true-love kind of message." Grandma Frida grinned. — Ilona Andrews

What else happened?' she asked, not because she was particularly interested, but because one must talk to one's mother when she came to visit one, however tired and dispirited one felt. — Monica Dickens

Current conflicts and guilt about being a woman who is a mother and a person in her own right are a socially defined malaise, notan individual problem ... The conflict is not between being a mother and having a career; it is between nineteenth-century ideas about children and today's ideas about women. — Sandra Scarr

When I feel like I'm not doing what I am supposed to as a mother, I will torture myself. I don't know how to deal with it. I find some consolation in the fact that all mommies feel it. If there was a way to cure mommy guilt, I would bottle it and be a bazillionaire. — Angie Harmon

My mother used to say not sleeping was the sign of a guilty mind. It could have been. There was a lot in my mind to feel guilty about. When you're drunk and trying to sleep, your thoughts are visited by the ghosts of those deeds whose heat still glows hottest in your personal darkness. Our actions burn much longer than the moments in which they occur. And drunks like me, we hide from the glow of the embers by fueling other fires and hiding within the flames. — Robert E. Dunn

Your mother left you. Trevor used you and gave you up. Your father is dead. None of it was your fault, yet you constantly want to saddle yourself with the guilt, and this ridiculous notion of being unworthy. Its fucking destroying you. And not just you. Everyone who cares about you. So just shut up. I may not know the depth of you pain. I may not have been with you through every single dramatic incident that has happened in you life, but I love you, Sarah. And I want you to be happy. — S.J. Wright

- Child is abused, perpetrator threatens to hurt mother. Child feels protective of mother.
- Struggle to escape perp reinforces feelings of mutual protection. It's Mom and I against the world.
- Something necessary at the time later creates "enmeshment." Child doesn't see her actions as separate from mother. Even during normal adolescent individuation. But
- Normal individuation doesn't happen in abuse survivors. They don't feel normal, so they
- Act out in unhealthy or self-destructive ways, which creates
- Fear and pain for mother, which creates
- Guilt for child who still feels responsible for mother's emotional health.
- Child seeks release from the guilt and from not feeling normal, which leads to
- Escape to the world of other not normal people, where mother can't see her child self-destruct, which leads to
"The bad news. — Claire Fontaine

The purpose of guilt is to bring us to the Lord, after that it has no purpose. — Mother Teresa

Have to love the preemptive guilt trip! I will be visiting home for Mother's Day. Hoping for minimal "baby cannon" talk, but realistically that's going to be a big part of the day. — Kate Siegel

It's my turn to feed him," Gray says without looking up. "So bottled breast
milk it is. He hates it. I know, little dude," he says to the baby. "I love Mommy's
boobs too, but she needs to sleep."
From the far room, a muffled groan rings out. "Mother guilt has killed my
sleep," says Ivy's disembodied voice. "And don't discuss my boobs with my son,
Cupcake. — Kristen Callihan

Do you trust this boy?"
"I trust that he's probably listening to this conversation right now."
"Surely he's capable of being a gentleman and wouldn't do such a thing," she said with false sweetness. I knew she was saying it to him, not me. I wondered how Kaidan would fare against a mother's guilt trip. — Wendy Higgins

Balance in impossible; memories are better. (TILT-7 Solutions To Be A Guilt-free Working Mom) — Marci Fair

We drove down Corydon avenue towards my mother's apartment. How are you doing, she asked me? Fine, fine, I said. I wanted to tell her that I felt I was dying from rage and that I felt guilty about everything and that when I was a kid I woke up every morning singing, that I couldn't wait to leap out of bed and rush out of the house into the magical kingdom that was my world, that dust made visible in sunbeams gave me real authentic joy, that my sparkly golden banana-seated bike with the very high sissy bar took my breath away, the majesty of it, that it was mine, that there was no freer soul in the world than me at age nine, and that now I wake up every morning reminding myself that control is an illusion, taking deep breaths and counting to ten trying to ward off panic attacks and hoping that my own hands hadn't managed to strangle me while I slept. — Miriam Toews

Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Jesus always seems to be pairing God's forgiveness of us with our forgiveness of others. But why? Growing up, I thought it was a way of guilting us into forgiving others, like Jesus was saying, Hey, I died for you and you can't even be nice to your little brother? As though God can get us to do the right thing if God can just make us feel bad about how much we owe God. But that is not the God I see in Jesus Christ. That is a manipulative mother. — Nadia Bolz-Weber

Once you become a mother, you always have a guilt trip. You always try to do the best, but you feel you can always be better. — Gal Gadot

My mother was French Protestant, and my father was Italian Catholic, and their union was an excess of God, guilt and sauce. — Mitch Albom

If in poetry court she was called
to testify on matters where
I was condemned to imprisonment: parking my ego
at a broken meter, line violations, forced rhyme,
dealing stanzaics to children, shooting
off my mouth, getting cute, for even this
latest attempt at verse, she would tell the whole truth,
she would admit from the pit
of her unsung brilliance,
from all of the paintings and poems
she herself has been making
and storing in the vast empire of her
singing soul, your Honor, my daughter is guilty
of plagiarizing my cells. — Kristen Henderson

She always imagined the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and Blessed Mother as points of light in the center of her heart, and as she prayed, the light expanded, flowing through her body and soul, smoothing away knots of guilt and sorrow and fear until her whole being glowed with harmony. — Mary Jo Putney

Food ... love ... mother ... career ... Live every day to the fullest. Partake of the four basic guilt groups. — Cathy Guisewite

Peabody only smiled. Guilt was the best tool, she knew. She'd learned that one at her mother's knee. — J.D. Robb

My mother's story continues to haunt me, it will until the day I die. My guilt and personal anguish is a good thing. It propelles me to strive to become the man my mother wanted me to be. — M.J. Burke Sr.

My mother should have been Jewish. She could have taught a class on how to induce guilt. — Lorna Luft

I really admired other parents I saw running around with their kids. I thought, "How nice is that for their children?" But they also left me racked with guilt--until one mother, out of the dozens I met, told me I shouldn't feel bad. "You're not your daughter's playmate," she said, and I nearly burst out in tears, because I needed to hear that so badly. — Leah Remini

I had a lot of guilt as a single mother trying to raise a child. I had to go to work and Jeffrey was screaming that he didn't want me to. You have to give yourself permission to let go of the guilt. — Sherri Shepherd

There appears to be a deeply embedded uneasiness in our culture about throwing away junk that can be reused. Perhaps, in part, it is guilt about consumption. Perhaps it also feels unnatural. Mother Nature doesn't throw stuff away. Dead trees, birds, beetles and elephants are pretty quickly recycled by the system. — William Booth

The difference between guilt and shame is very clear
in theory. We feel guilty for what we do. We feel shame for what we are. A person feels guilt because he did something wrong. A person feels shame because he is something wrong. We may feel guilty because we lied to our mother. We may feel shame because we are not the person our mother wanted us to be. — Lewis B. Smedes

So now I spend my weekends with my mother in Petaluma, out of guilt. — Karina Halle

The realities of motherhood are often obscured by a halo of illusions. The future mother tends to fantasize about love and happiness and overlooks the other aspects of child-rearing: the exhaustion, frustration, loneliness, and even depression, with its attendant state of guilt. — Elisabeth Badinter

There appears to be a disturbing trend in this nation to try to force single moms to choose between their children and their careers. If they take their careers seriously, they are labeled as bad mothers. If they spend time with their children, they are labeled as people who can't be serious about careers outside the home. This is a sexist double standard. No such guilt trip is imposed on men, who are generally not forced to choose between their children and their jobs. — Gloria Allred

My daughter Gabby very kindly once said that she thinks I was a better mother because I was doing a job I loved. I now think guilt is a universal part of being a mother. I used to think it was Jewish-mother guilt but now I think it is working-mother guilt. — Donna Karan

Sometimes during the night, your father awakened. He rose from his bed, staggered across the room, and found the strength to raise the window sash. He called your mother's name with what little voice he had, and he called yours, too, and your brother, Joe. And he called for Mickey. At that moment, it seemed, his heart was spilling out, all the guilt and regret. Perhaps he felt the light of death approaching. Perhaps he only knew you were all out there somewhere, in the streets beneath his window. He bent over the ledge. The night was chilly. The wind and damp, in his state, were too much. He was dead before dawn. — Mitch Albom

Oh God, what do we do?"
"Do?" Levi said, looking oddly triumphant, like his plans for the night had finally materialized, Like he had been hoping for some disaster like this to happen so he didn't have to be bored anymore. Like even a dying girl in his bathtub was better than calling his mother to confirm that his grandfather actually was dead, and that what he had heard on the answering machine wasn't a mere auditory hallucination. "We save her, of course. — Matthew J. Hefti

A child free from the guilt of ownership and the burden of economic competition will grow up with the will to do what needs doing and the capacity for joy in doing it. It is useless work that darkens the heart. The delight of the nursing mother, of the scholar, of the successful hunter, of the good cook, of the skilful maker, of anyone doing needed work and doing it well, - this durable joy is perhaps the deepest source of human affection and of sociality as a whole. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Some things get worse when you share them," Jonathan said. "Dad was wise enough not to forget that." Evelyn looked at him and waited, seeming to hope that if he had said this much, he might say more. "Mother," he said, "there is not enough guilt in the world to make me forget it, either. — T. Ellery Hodges

Are we bereft of citizenship because we are mothers, wives and daughters of a mighty people? Have women no country
no interests staked in public weal
no liabilities in common peril
no partnership in a nation's guilt and shame? — Angelina Grimke

My mother is now in the hospital 60 miles away, where they are treating her pneumonia. I refuse to feel guilty. Guilt is a destructive emotion and doesn't fit in with my Life Plan. — Sue Townsend

The Mommy Wars, as they stand today, serve as an effective check on the ambitions of the American mother. The phenomenon keeps women in a perpetual state of guilt, shame and inadequacy, and does so without involving anyone but wealthy white women. — Shannon Drury

As her sons have seen her: the mother in patriarchy: controlling, erotic, castrating, heart-suffering, guilt-ridden, and guilt-provoking; a marble brow, a huge breast, an avid cave; between her legs snakes, swamp-grass, or teeth; on her lap a helpless infant or a martyred son. She exists for one purpose: to bear and nourish the son. — Adrienne Rich

I was brought up in the shadow of the Holocaust. My mother lost most of her family, and I didn't realize how much the guilt of survivorship weighed on her until I was an adult. — Naomi Benaron

She was quite pretty too in those days; indeed, perhaps she still was. But for some reason none of her boyfriends remained boyfriends for long. She had a very decided personality and fairly soon took to telling them what they should do with their lives and studies and work. She began to mother them or perhaps brother them (since she was something of a tomboy) - and this sooner or later took the edge off their romantic excitement. They even began to find her vivacity over-powering, and sooner or later edged away from her - with guilt on their side and pain on hers. This was a great pity, for Kalpana Gaur was a lively, affectionate, and intelligent woman, and deserved some recompense for the help and happiness she gave others — Vikram Seth

My mother is in a bed with tubes down her throat, my twin is now on a different continent, and my father is holding himself together by a thread."

Stopping across from him, I continued. "I have two younger brothers to keep calm in the wake of all this, a country to run, and six boys downstairs waiting for me to offer one of them my hand." Coddly swallowed, and I felt only the tiniest bit of guilt for the satisfaction it brought me. "So, yes, I am emotional right now. Anyone in my position with a soul would be. And you, sir, are an idiot. How dare you try to force my hand on something so monumental on the grounds of something so small? For all intents and purposes, I am queen, and you will not coerce me into anything. — Kiera Cass

She turned; she bruised under her heel the scaly head of this dark suspicion-as terrifying to her as his guilt was to him. 'O Absalom, my Absalom! Come, come, we will not entertain such a thought. God himself would not urge it upon a mother. — Theodore Dreiser

It seems to me like this. It's not a terrible thing - I mean, it may be terrible, but it's not damaging, it's not poisoning, to do something one wants. It's not bad to say: My work is not what I really want, I'm capable of doing something bigger. Or I'm a person who needs love, and I'm doing without it. What's terrible is to pretend that the second rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better, It would be very bad i I said, out of guilt or something: I loved Janet's father, when i know quite well I didn't. Or for your mother to say: I loved Richard. Or I'm doing work I love ... — Doris Lessing

Great artistic works are often based on solving several psychological problems simultaneously. In literature this is often accomplished by splitting apart the conflict and assigning each aspect to a different character. Marjie Rynearson, for instance, wrote an award-winning play, Jenny, about the meeting and reconciliation of two women: the mother of a murder victim and the mother of the murderer. Within the dialogue between the two characters she sought to resolve two sets of problems: the rage and grief of the victim's mother, and the horror, guilt, and grief of the murderer's mother. She worked on the play for several years, and only when it was finished did she realize that through it she was struggling to resolve her feelings about the suicide of her best friend. Rynearson had simultaneously been, in effect, both the friend of the victim and the friend of the perpetrator of the killing. The power of the work lay in its simultaneous resolution of conflicting problems. — Linda Austin

Caleb rocked back on his heels, surprised by how good her husky laughter and their repartee made him feel. He wasn't a man given to bantering with women - with anyone for that matter. Out here in the wilderness, with a woman about to give birth, he wasn't the banker or the hotel owner. I'm just a man trying to hold his guilt and terror at bay and make sure this mother and child survive. — Debra Holland

Once upon a time there was a mother who, in order to become a mother, had agreed to change her name; who set herself the task of falling in love with her husband bit-by-bit, but who could n ever manage to love one part, the part, curiously enough, which made possible her motherhood; whose feet were hobbled by verrucas and whose shoulders were stooped beneath the accumulating guilts of the world; whose husband's unlovable organ failed to recover from the effects of a freeze; and who, like her husband, finally succumbed to the mysteries of telephones, spending long minutes listening to the words of wrong-number callers ... shortly after my tenth birthday (when I had recovered from the fever which has recently returned to plague me after an interval of nearly twenty-one years), Amina Sinai resumed her recent practice of leaving suddenly, and always immediately after a wrong number, on urgent shopping trips. — Salman Rushdie

I realized, listening to the silences that fell sometimes in my interview groups, that there are things that are sayable and unsayable about motherhood today. It is permissable, for example, to talk a lot about guilt, but not a lot about ambition. You can talk a lot about sex (or its lack) but not about the feelings that are keeping women from sleeping with their husbands. You can talk about society's lack of "appreciation" of mother's and the need for more social validation
but not about policy that might actually make life better. You cannot really challenge the American culture of rugged individualism. — Judith Warner

Everybody has a jury, the voices they carry inside. Earl Briggs sits on my jury, Gloria Dayton, too. They are there with Katie and Sandy, my mother, my father, and soon Legal Siegel as well. Those I have loved and those I have hurt. Those who bless me and those who haunt me. My gods of guilt. Every day I carry on and I carry them close. Every day I step into the well before them and I argue my case. — Michael Connelly

Nearly the physical size of Los Angeles, Bukchang housed fifty thousand prisoners who were kept in by, among many other things, a four-meter-high fence. If you were sent here, so was your entire family-the classic definition of guilt by association, which extended to infants, toddlers, teenagers, siblings, spouses, and grandparents. Babies born here shared the same guilt as their families. Unauthorized babies born here, because intercourse and pregnancies were strictly regulated, were killed. Age and personal culpability meant nothing, and a toddler and an ancient grand- mother were treated the same-brutally. — David Baldacci

Her child is not king, because he is a satellite to her own life. At the same time, her child is omnipresent because this satellite follows his mother everywhere, and together they share valuable moments. He might join her at a lunch, accompany her to a boutique, end up at a concert or a cocktail party, where he will fall asleep on a sofa as she watches over him with equal amounts of guilt and tenderness. — Anonymous

They hate me because I am the worst thing possible. I am the bad mother.

But here's a secret: in America there are no good mothers. They simply don't exist. Always, there are a thousand ways to fail at this singularly important job. There are failures of the body and failures of the heart. The woman who is unable to breastfeed is a failure. The woman who screams for the epidural is a failure. The woman who picks up her child late knows from the teacher's cutting glance that she is a failure. The woman who shares her bed with her baby has failed. The woman who steels herself and puts on noise-canceling earphones to erase the screaming of her child the next room has failed just as spectacularly. They must all hang their heads in guilt and shame because they haven't done it perfectly, and motherhood is, if anything, the assumption of perfection. — Nayomi Munaweera

But I could see how awful and scary it was for my family to see me in my khaki uniform and get a tiny taste of what I was experiencing, surrounded by guards, strangers, and powerful systems of control. I felt terrible for exposing them to this world. Every week I needed to renew my promises to my mother and Larry that I was going to make it, that I was okay. I felt more guilt and shame witnessing their worry than when I stood in front of the judge - and it had been terrible standing in that courtroom. — Piper Kerman

You want to give me chocolate and flowers? That would be great. I love them both. I just don't want them out of guilt, and I don't want them if you're not going to give them to all the people who helped mother our children. — Anne Lamott

My identity has always been confused. Born in Edinburgh of a Scottish/Russian/Jewish mother and an English/Irish/Catholic father, there is no form of guilt to which I was not subjected in my childhood. Members of my immediate family live all over the world - a diaspora of cousins, aunts, uncles and more in a dizzying mix. — Sara Sheridan

It took me years to stop feeling the guilt she made sure I kept feeling about what happened with him. He is a sick person that molests children, but I felt so bad about it for so long. I couldn't talk to a single person about any of this. No one. And she made me feel so bad about it all that I felt I shouldn't talk about it, even if there was someone. I felt ashamed and thought I was an awful person. Sometimes I still do. My mother abandoned me in the worst ways possible. — Ashly Lorenzana

For the last four years of her life, Mother was in a nursing home called Chateins in St. Louis ... [S]ix months before she died I sent a Mother's Day card. There was a horrible, mushy poem in it. I remember feeling vaguely guilty. — William S. Burroughs

Know that every mother occasionally feels "at the end of her rope." When you reach the end of your rope, don't add guilt to your frustration. No one said motherhood was going to be easy. — Heather King

"Have you done your homework?" my mother would ask. "I'll do it later." "You will do it now, young man. I don't want you winding up on the third shift at Flagg-Utica." Flagg-Utica was a local textile plant. Somehow, I never could figure how failing to read three chapters in my geography book about the various sorts of vegetation to be found in a tropical rain forest had anything to do with facing a life as a mill hand. But with enough guilt and fear as catalysts, you can read anything, even geography books and Deuteronomy. — Lewis Grizzard

My mother started to suffer from multiple sclerosis, but nobody knew what MS was then. My father didn't - and later he suffered a great deal of guilt over that. It was an awful business and very fraught. — Ruth Rendell