Trethewey's mother, Gwendolyn Ann Turnbough was a social worker and part of the inspiration for "Native Guard" (2006), which is dedicated to her memory. Trethewey's parents divorced when she was six and Turnbough was murdered in 1985 by her second husband, whom she had recently divorced, when Trethewey was 19 years old. Recalling her reaction to her mother's death, she said: "that was the moment when I both felt that I would become a poet and then immediately afterward felt that I would not. I turned to poetry to make sense of what had happened."