There is a remarkable story that I found written in the book, “To Love as God Loves” by Roberta Bondi. Here it is. “A woman I know had had great difficulties in her relationships with her mother over the years; her mother had seemed to her to be harsh and critical and unloving, though she had wanted her love very badly, and she struggled hard and vainly not to be afraid of her even in her adult years. Then when she was well past 35 she met someone who had known her mother as a child, and who told her things about the unhappiness of her mother’s childhood she had never even suspected. Suddenly she found herself overwhelmed with an entirely new desire to protect her mother and care for her. Her heart had been freed to see her mother not as the one who had a mother’s power over her but as a person who was herself in need of gentleness and attention. As she understood this, she was given further insights into her mother over a long period of time, and to each of them she continued to respond and grow and love. She found that once she had begun to be attentive to her mother’s needs, her mother, too, became a continuing source of grace for her as her anxiety and mistrust of others receded.”