We realize that Willow Tait says she wants to keep living on General Hospital. Grow old with Michael. Raise her kids. Prop up Carly. But her actions haven’t been matching her words. This is the woman who put off treatment for so long, not even telling the man she supposedly loved about it, that now her condition is fatal.

General Hospital: Willow Tait And Her Choices

Willow (Katelyn MacMullen) even dug her heels in about stem cell donation, not wanting to deliver her daughter a whopping three weeks prematurely and refusing the overtures of her biological mother. Willow says she wants to live. But she acts like she wants to die. And we’ve popped her on the couch to figure out why.

GH: Mommy Issues

When viewers first met Willow outside of being bratty Charlotte’s teacher, it was as Wiley’s presumed birth mother. It turned out that the baby Willow gave birth to died, but the fact remains that she’d had a son whom she gave up for adoption. Willow did it because the infant’s birth father was a crazy cult leader, and she wanted to protect her son from Shiloh. A noble motive. But not the only one, we think.

Role Model For Willow Tait

We suspect another reason for Willow giving up her baby ties into the reason she has refused to fight for her life now. Because Willow is terrified of being a mother. She is terrified of being a bad mother. Like Harmony, the woman who raised her. The one who raised her in a cult and pimped her out to said cult leader.

This was all when Willow thought it was Harmony’s blood coursing through her veins. Now that she knows that Nina (Cynthia Watros) is her biological mother, she has even more to fear from parenthood.

Willow won’t admit it out loud. Willow likely doesn’t even realize it. But her not fighting to stay alive comes from her fear of screwing up Wiley and Amelia the way Harmony screwed up her. And the even worse job she’s sure Nina would have done raising her. She…really should speak to someone about that. And get it fixed.