A Quote by Karen Kilgariff

I told my mom for years that I wanted to be a manicurist, and she'd always be like, 'But what if you went to college and you got a degree?' She'd try to explain how I could actually do a thing that would make me a ton of money, or that I didn't have to just pick the business that was closest to our house.
I was actually born and raised in Puerto Rico. I was born to a single mom. She was a wonderful woman, and she taught me to believe in myself, to work hard, play by the rules. She wanted me to get a good education, and she just told me that the best thing I could do is just study hard.
My mom is from Jamaica and she was going to school in the morning, and in the evening she was working, and at night she would go to night school and then come in and go to sleep. So she would never watch the news and stuff like that and she didn't know what crack was. She didn't know nothing about it, but when I told her I was selling crack, she threatened to kick me out of the house. And then I just started paying for stuff - paying her bills and giving her money, so she'd just tell me to be careful because there was nothing she could do to stop it.
My mom was always keen I stayed in school and got good grades, and she was always keen for me to do medicine. I used to go to drama classes when I was younger, and she would always take me. But when I got to an age when I decided it was what I wanted to do, when she accepted it, she had actually been the most supportive person ever.
He began to trace a pattern on the table with the nail of his thumb. "She kept saying she wanted to keep things exactly the way they were, and that she wished she could stop everything from changing. She got really nervous, like, talking about the future. She once told me that she could see herself now, and she could also see the kind of life she wanted to have - kids, husband, suburbs, you know - but she couldn't figure out how to get from point A to point B.
My mom worked at McDonald's, and she decided she wanted to make more money, so she got into the management program at McDonald's. And that's how you move up the chain. It's not by demanding that minimum wage is raised; it's by actually acquiring the skills. That's the way that people get ahead in life.
She told me that she would support me regardless of what I decided, but I'm so glad that I actually got to be a kid before having to grow up. My mom knows best about this kind of thing.
My mom had always been big on education. She was the first woman in our family to go to college, and she often reminded me that I needed to go to college if I wanted to really make it in life.
I got to give mom credit for how she handled it.She didn't try to pry and get all the details. All she said was that I should try to do "the right thing" because it's our choices that make us who we are. I figure that's pretty decent advice. But I'm still not 100% sure what I'm going to do tomorrow.
I didn’t get her cutting at all. She’d done it sporadically, ever since the accident and it scared me each time. She'd try to explain it to me, how she didn't want to die—she just needed to get it out somehow. She felt so much emotionally, she would say, that a physical outlet—physical pain—was the only way to make the internal pain go away. It was the only way she could control it.
Probably about 10 years ago or so I told my grandmother that I always wanted to make a record of hymns if I could ever make a career of all of this. She kind of held me to it. She passed away in 1999. I just never forgot it.
I was almost 8 years old when I was watching a kid on a TV commercial, and I told my mom that I wanted to do the same thing. She said that I would need to get an agent and that she would research it.
My mom always wanted to go to Maryland to live there. Baltimore, actually. She had a best friend who lived there. She kept saying that she was going to move there and make that her home, but she only made it halfway across the country and got stuck in Iowa.
My mom would spend a week in jail. She would spend a day in jail here - a week again, a week and a half, two weeks. My grandmother tells me stories of how because I would be at the house, I wouldn't notice that my mom was gone because she would be at work sometimes. So it was just like time when my mom would be gone and my grandma would tell me she'll be back. And nobody knew where anybody was.
I hope they're still making women like my momma. She always told me to do the right thing. She always told me to have pride in myself; she said a good name is better than money.
I love getting my nails done. My mom's best friend is a manicurist. When I was little, she'd do little paintings on my nails, like flowers. She comes to our house. It's the best.
I was my mom's oldest child, so she was like, watching closely and taking notes, like, 'Okay, this is what she gravitates towards,' and she gave me all the tools to keep me focused. I liked to write; she got me notebooks. I wanted to draw; she got me sketch books and crayons and coloured pencils.
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