Why It’s Hard To Feel Sympathy For GH’s Willow Tait

There was once a time when Willow Tait was a sympathetic school teacher doing the best she could as a single young woman who left a cult and was inadvertently mixed up in a convoluted baby switch story. However, Willow has changed oh-so-much since then.

Willow Tait Made A Choice

Willow’s (Katelyn MacMullen) standing in our eyes started to go downhill when she lied that she still loved her ex-boyfriend, Harrison Chase (Josh Swickard), and married him when she thought he was on his deathbed.

The look on her face the moment she learned he would live was enough to make us all cringe and wonder what happened to this once-sweet character who could only think of going back to Michael Corinthos (Chad Duell) and their comfortable little life raising Wiley Corinthos. She even slept with Michael behind Chase’s back — right after crying over the anniversary of the death of her own newborn two years earlier.

Since then, we have watched Willow stick her nose in the air at anyone who invades her little life and become shrill to anyone who crosses her or Michael. She even tried sticking her nose in the air at cancer and sadly learned it just doesn’t work that way.

GH: Willow Didn’t Think Ahead

When Willow learned she was pregnant with Michael’s child, she was overjoyed by the idea of expanding her family while still thinking of the child she lost, but both the audience and TJ Ashford (Tajh Bellow) knew there was something else going on. Willow soon learned she was suffering from leukemia, but it was in the very early stages, and her prognosis was good if she began treatment right away.

At the time, we believed GH might be trying to tell a pro-choice story where the life of the mother would come before the fetus she was carrying in a country where millions of women had just lost their right to choose their own life. Instead, Willow became a martyr, arrogantly assuming that cancer would wait till her first trimester was over and chemo would have less of an effect on the developing fetus.

Why Was Willow Tait Shocked?

It took quite a few more months longer than expected (in real-time), but eventually, Willow made it to the second trimester and anxiously walked into a doctor’s appointment, ready for her chemo to begin. When she was told that her cancer had progressed to stage 4 while she neglected it, Willow was gutted and stunned. But what did she think was going to happen? When cancer diagnoses are made, doctors want to start chemo immediately for a reason. Cancer doesn’t care if you are pregnant or not, and cancer wants to kill you.

It was only upon hearing that she may have waited too long to start treatment that Willow realized the gravity of her choice. She didn’t think of the child she already has who would be devastated to lose his mother. She didn’t even think of what would happen if she gave birth to a healthy child but then wasn’t there to raise it. Heck, Willow didn’t even bother letting the father of her child know what was going on because she didn’t want him to have any influence over a choice that could cost her life and possibly their unborn child.

Willow didn’t think ahead, didn’t think of others, and certainly didn’t think of all the women not living in New York State who, in real life, are currently being forced to forgo chemo when pregnant because the government tells them they have to. While Willow also had a choice, the choice to forgo chemo for several months, the way she went about it was selfish, and she made that choice without thinking ahead at all. While we want to feel bad for this fictional character, it’s getting harder and harder to muster up any sympathy for this weeping Willow.

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