She loves her children more than anything else in her life, she views them as something of herself and experiences and intensely personal and strong love for them that others who had been slaves would have found to dangerous or risky. Her worst memory is based on her love for her children, when Schoolteacher's nephews attack Sethe she obsesses most about the fact that they "took [her] milk" (pg#); this is so terrible for Sethe because her milk was a real, physical reminder of how important she was (and still is) for her children, it was, literally, their life. Sethe's experiences in the past continued to haunt her throughout the novel, and even materialized in the form of the "crawling already?" daughter she murdered, now a (approximately) 21 year old woman with a child's or infant's mind.
	As Sethe tries to "disremember" her past she, inadvertently, gives it much more power over her. Sethe's belief in rememory, and in the reality of past memories causes her to be uncomfortable with the concept of "forgetting," she instead uses "disremember" and attempts to suppress or ignore her past. Her immersion in past experiences, wrongs, and even joys makes her more vulnerable when the memory of Beloved comes back as an apparently real person. Beloved is starved for attention and meaning in her non-life, she seems to remember either her people's past, or her time in death (or both, as Morrison is purposely abstract when dealing with Beloved). Sethe now finds that speaking of her past with Beloved is cathartic and comforting for her, she enjoys having an innocent listener who will neither judge nor abandon her, and feels more in control of her life when she tells stories from it to Beloved. However, as Beloved is not real she can never be satisfied, she will take as much as Sethe can give and more; Beloved "never got enough of anything…the more she took, the more Sethe began to talk…" (240-41). The other characters in the novel caution, directly and indirectly, Sethe and the reader against the perceived mistakes that Sethe is making. Ella illustrates warnings against both or Sethe's most prominent "mistakes." She believes that it is too dangerous for Sethe to love her children to the extent that she does because of the fragility of family connections at the time, she cautions Sethe "Don't love nothing". Ella also sees the preoccupation with the past as damaging; she "didn't like the idea of past errors taking possession of the present" (256). Sethe cannot see her love for her children as a weakness, and doesn't understand why her suppression of and obsession with the past is damaging to her present and future. However, when Beloved begins to seem much more threatening and Sethe becomes ill her daughter goes to the town for help. 
	Even after Beloved's defeat Sethe does not return to her former strength, she has lost her determination, believing that "[her] best thing" is now permanently tarnished, and no longer connected to her. 