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My mother-in-law passed away three years ago and I miss her every day. Strange to hear myself say that, because that's certainly not how our relationship started off.

I've had two mothers-in-law and initially I disliked them both. I had my own mother and certainly didn't need another mother's advice or interference in how to look after my husband or raise my children.

Then, tragically, I lost my own mother. Gradually I started talking to and confiding in my mother-in-law and before I knew it we had become friends. It took my own mothers passing to force me to give this woman a chance at becoming a member of our family. We became great friends and I rued the days when I didn't acknowledge her as just another mother, a mother who loves her children.

Strange how what goes around comes around'. Now I myself am a mother-in-law three times over and history is repeating itself. My sons tend to lean towards their wives families and I regret every day that this is how I treated my in-laws. We are all just ordinary people trying our best to be happy in this sometimes difficult lifetime. The words themselves mother-in-law' have become dreaded words with dreadful connotations. Of course my daughters-in-law prefer to be with their own mothers, as I did too, but sometimes it hurts immensely to be treated in an offhand manner. I have tried to explain to my sons that we feel like the other' family but they don't understand. Now they also have sons and it saddens me that they too will have to experience the loneliness and disappointments that we are now going through.

My mother's words ring loudly in my ear: "Your son is your son until he takes a wife; your daughter is your daughter for the rest of her life". How absolutely true!
Fortunately for me I also have a daughter and this lessens the pain of losing the closeness I used to have with my sons.

A young friend confided in me once that she thought her mother-in-law was offhand with her, did not call in to see her unless previously organized and she felt no closeness with her at all. I suggested that this mother-in-law could be feeling the same as I was with my daughters-in-law and that she was probably unsure of her position in their family. I suggested she treat her more as a friend instead of the dreaded mother-in-law' tag. This same young woman had a small son so I asked her how she would want her son's future wife to treat her - and that's how she should treat her mother-in-law. We're not ogres - we're just mothers who love our sons and want to be included in their lives.

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