On Mother’s Day, phone privileges are canceled for everyone, a decision that’s only announced at breakfast. Between meals, the mothers must remain in their rooms and write in their atonement journals. They’re encouraged to reflect on their remaining shortcomings and their missing children, to remember last Mother’s Day and think about next year’s, as well as giving thanks to the women who raised them. “I am a bad mother because,” Frida writes. She quickly fills five pages.
