kareina

You are so right! And I think you make part of the point I wanted to make even better than I could have--you have a decent relationship with your mother because *you* work on it. Any of us who feel like someone in our lives we must deal with (be it family even a coworker) is always unpleasant to be around do have the option of putting forth the effort to make time with them more pleasant by working on it ourselves. That is where my philosophy of looking for the good in anyone we meet comes in handy--if we focus upon the things we like about a person rather than their unpleasant traits it is easier to do the work required to get along with them...