Recommender Too Busy to Submit Letter I've actually just finished applying to 12 graduate programs all around the country and so far, things have been pretty smooth but there is one thing that I am concerned about.

I have three people that I asked to write a letter of recommendation for me. Two of them have all sent in their LOR's already which is great, but there is one that I'm kind of having issues with sadly.

I told her last week that I'm still missing LOR's from her. Her response was that A) she didn't know that I was applying to that many schools and B) she's way too busy to send out those LOR's. I totally understand the amount of stress she probably has to deal with for someone as busy as she is, but at the same time, I'm really bummed out about it because she did initially agree to write them for me before the application submission season even started. To add, I also sent her a list of all the schools I was applying to at that time. 

Now fast-forwarding to this week, she sent in LOR's to four of the schools I'm applying to. That's a start! But I reminded her again that I'm applying to other schools as well, eight more to be exact, and they're all currently waiting for her LOR to be submitted. She responds that no, she sent it in to five schools--and I hope this is just my online checklist lagging, but this doesn't seem to be the case--and that she's too busy to do even more. She explicitly said that she wants this to be the last time she'll have to turn in any more letters due to how busy she is on the last email she's sent me.

I'm awfully depressed about this situation and I'm not certain about what to do. I'm not the richest person in the world so I literally spent a good portion of my savings just to apply. Those application fees add up. To have that money and all that time I spent working on my apps go to waste just because one single component of my application was missing would be a major disappointment. At the same time, I really don't want to cause tension between her and me. I totally sympathize for her situation, and I really don't want to burden her, so I'm a little hesitant to try to talk to her again. I definitely don't want to come across as pushy.

Any suggestions on how to tackle this? I get a bit teary-eyed and anxious when I have to think about this.
It's hard for me to understand how this can really be an issue for the professor, because in this day and age of online submission, once she has written a letter, it takes very little time to submit it to each additional school.  Twelve schools is a little on the high side but certainly not ridiculous.  However, it won't really help the situation for you to tell her that.  Of course, overwork and burnout are definitely things for faculty, and there could be issues like that in play.  But my point is that based on what you've said, it sounds like your request is totally reasonable, and this is unprofessional behavior on her part.

I would suggest you discuss this with her department chair.  You could share your email chain with the chair, making it clear that  you requested the letters well in advance and the professor agreed to send them; that she has actually already written the letter; and that the reason for her balking is not apparently related to any concerns about your qualifications.

The chair will be better positioned to speak to the faculty member about sending the letters.  Departments have an interest in seeing students succeed, and I think most chairs would not be happy about seeing this obstructed for relatively trivial reasons.  The chair may also be able to offer to adjust the professor's workload, or have the letters submitted by some other staff member.  As a last resort, the chair may be able to lean on some other professor to write a substitute letter at short notice.

Be prompt about this, but don't panic too much about approaching deadlines.  Graduate programs are usually able to have some flexibility about letters submitted after a deadline, as long as the student's portion of the application was in on time.

This might hurt your relationship with the professor somewhat.  However, I would say she already blew up your relationship by refusing to submit your letters.  That's a breach of a very straightforward professional obligation.