Lynn Johnston Quotes

Once upon a time, if you wanted to talk about the notion of child abandonment, of a mother not being a good mother, that's built into the mother who sends the babes into the woods, and they use the bits of bread or stones to come home again.

I admire my mother for being a single mum. It's ridiculously hard.

It has been tough being a mother of two daughters without a co-parent because I think I was a child myself, as my mother was.

My mother never took my hand.

My mum had four kids on her own, so if I had one kid with one nanny and not a full-time job, it would be a joke. And I think the impossible happens when you leave your kids. I've seen so many nannies in the park on their phones, and the kids are running off.

I was a child, and my mother was psychotic. She loved me, but I didn't really feel I had a mother. And when you live with somebody who is paranoid and thinks you're trying to kill them all the time, you tend to feel a little betrayed.

It's crazy how people just don't care sometimes about the kids they have.

With the single parent model, you experience betrayal differently. You experience lying from your kids differently.

I was traumatized by a lot of childhood stuff. I felt that I was bad somewhere, starting with my birth.

My father took my mother, me, and my brother from Sicily to New York. He got us one-way tickets but booked himself a return flight. He dumped us with my mother's parents, who had just arrived from Italy, and abandoned us. That was 1986. I didn't see or speak to him for another 12 years. That's cruel.

My dad was an only child. His father raised him all but alone after his mother abandoned the two of them. He was only three years old.

Humans are incredibly selfish. And in parents, flaws become hyper focused.

Because if their own parents didn't care enough about them to keep them, who would want them in Heaven?

Right from the start my parents had left me to fend for myself. Apparently unaware that I was a kid, they invariably treated me like an adult, perhaps because they themselves were no spring chickens.

My dad left home when I was super young, so it was my mum bringing me and my brother up.

My biological mother had me at 16, and it was just too young.

I never helped my kids. I was working too hard. My kids had to be responsible for themselves.

My father walked out on us when I was three months old, and my mum, well, she wasn't the driven sort.

We're all born into this world. Some are placed gently, others thrust into it, and still others abandoned.

I love my son, but I was never there for him, so I understand why he hates me.

My father, he left the family when I was 13, so mum looked after us.

When I was seven months pregnant with Ariana, my husband cheated on me, so I became a single mother to a four-year-old and a newborn.

Since I was sent to an orphanage, and I saw very little of my mother, I can counsel mothers that you shouldn't abandon your children. Before you bring a child into the world, think deeply about things, so that they lack absolutely nothing, least of all love.

Growing up raising three boys on your own is either gonna make you strong or make you crazy. It definitely made my mom strong.

I regret hurting my wife and my child and abandoning them. I regret the pain I caused them.