Motherhood Quote by Eartha Kitt

Abandonment, in Eartha Kitt's telling, isn’t a single wound; it’s a lens that rewrites every relationship that follows. The bluntness of "I was given away" lands like a legal transaction, not a breakup. No soft verbs, no euphemism. It frames childhood as a moment when love and custody can be swapped, and the emotional logic that follows is brutally consistent: if the first person tasked with permanence leaves, impermanence becomes the rule.

Kitt’s second sentence does the real work. She shifts from biography to psychology in one breath, mapping how early rupture metastasizes into expectation. "You think everybody... is going to give you away" is less confession than diagnosis, and the phrasing matters: not "might leave" but "is going to", a future tense that turns intimacy into a countdown. It’s a survival strategy disguised as pessimism. Assume betrayal, and you’re never surprised; stay half-detached, and you can claim you chose the exit.

The context sharpens the edge. Kitt’s public persona was controlled glamour, feline poise, a performer who could project dominance onstage even when the industry treated women - especially Black women with unapologetic sexuality - as disposable. Her line reads like the private cost behind that armor. It also hints at why she was famously unbowed in life and politics: when you’ve already been "given away", pleasing gatekeepers looks like a bad bargain. The quote isn’t asking for pity. It’s explaining the architecture of mistrust, and how it can harden into style.