Finding Peace with Difficult People

By Anonymous

Like many people, I’ve had to deal with difficult relationships along my journey. The worst of these has been with my aunt – who seemed to challenge the peace of everyone around her. I didn’t just want to walk away. I wanted us both to find peace and with the help of A Course In Miracles and an ACIM teacher we did.

My first difficult relationship was with my mother who was an alcoholic and always angry. My last goodbye with her was cool and distant. I was shocked and dismayed when 3 months later I was at her funeral.

My second difficult relationship was with my mother-in-law. She was controlling and mean. Years later I walked away from the marriage and the mother-in-law.

Now for the third and most difficult relationship of them all. My mother’s sister was not well-liked in the family. I saw her occasionally growing up and remember the day she and my mother had a blow-up argument where they stopped speaking.

During my second marriage we moved around quite a bit because my husband was in the military. To my surprise we moved to the town where my aunt lived. By this time few people in the family talked to her. Her husband had early signs of dementia and financially they were unstable. It felt like she latched onto me as her savior because I became her ‘favorite’ niece, a sentiment that always felt false and hollow to me.

Spending time with her I came to think she was a snob. She never listened when someone spoke, answering only the question she thought was asked, or should be asked. In my eyes she was a racist and said demeaning things about the immigrants around her, totally ignoring the fact that she was an immigrant herself. She thought only of herself and what she wanted or needed, helping those around her only when it was in her own best interest. Nothing was ever her fault. She was miserable and depressing to be around, often criticizing whatever the situation was. I dreaded having to be in her presence.

Over the next eight years I saw her husband’s dementia worsen, learned it had caused them financial ruin, and saw how she tried to hold it all together until he finally passed. I realized she was a poor money manager and if I didn’t take her grocery shopping, she wouldn’t eat. She had no children of her own and no one else in the family wanted anything to do with her. My sister was the only other person who helped by sending a monthly stipend to our aunt, but it went in one hand and out the other.

Then my husband was assigned overseas. Deep down I knew she could not survive another winter on her own. He asked the military to approve her as a dependent, and despite my desire to be nowhere near her, we offered to have her move with us. She accepted. I wanted to be helpful.

I let my ACIM teacher know that I wanted this relationship to end on good terms, whenever it ended. I felt that maybe I had failed with my other two relationships, and I wanted to do better with this one. Could I even learn to feel love for my aunt? I wasn’t sure yet all Jesus asks for is a little willingness. I had that.

We settled in our new home in August 2019. I found very quickly that my aunt’s attitude rubbed me the wrong way and I reacted poorly, attacking with just as much venom as she did. We got into numerous fights, with days where she wasn’t speaking to me. I was miserable. In January of 2020 I started leading a study group for the Workbook. One of the goals I set for myself was to heal this hateful relationship that I had with my aunt. Through 2020 I worked hard to apply the workbook practices to her, our relationship, and what was happening in my life.

My Course teacher kept reminding me to call on the Holy Spirit for guidance.

It was an extremely slow process for me to learn how to stop reacting to my aunt’s tirades, and instead act from a place of love. That first year abroad I was really trying to get past my hatred, as well as my feeling guilty for being hateful.

At first, I would remember to call on the Holy Spirit after the fact. With time, I would start calling on Him when I got the physical cues that I wanted to attack. By the end of the second year, I was able to call on Him beforehand when I knew that my aunt would react badly to what I would say.

I looked at what I thought I’d get out of this relationship. What was I gaining by being the victim, again? Nothing but misery I realized. Oftentimes though I didn’t care about my behavior. I would attack knowing that I’d regret it, knowing that I’d feel miserable, and knowing that I’d show who now had control. Pure ego I know.

And I looked at shadow figures in this relationship. There were two distinct ones. I kept thinking that if I healed this relationship maybe it would make up for the poor relationship I had with my mother. Or maybe the mother-in-law wouldn’t control me again. But they weren’t real. And they were in the past. It was time to let them go and allow the Holy Spirit to help me move forward in this relationship from the starting point of holiness – the holiness of my aunt standing in front of me.

After nearly a year and a half of living with my aunt my ACIM teacher reminded me that while there were still times of unrest, overall, I was handling it all better. I was able to diffuse situations before they got out of control and even in some cases end it with both my aunt and me smiling. I had gotten better at looking for the divine spark in her when we sat watching TV, or as we talked in the kitchen, sometimes even when she was shouting at me. My physical cues of anger were diminishing, and I was calling on the Holy Spirit faster and faster. Deep down though, I didn’t want to live with her any longer, but I couldn’t put her out on the street. I asked for guidance and found none. I looked for a place for her to live and have care.

Though less often, we still had difficult times. One evening she got upset about something I said and went on a tirade. As I stood in front of her, I worked hard to find love within me. I can’t say I found love but there was a shift in me, and my hate dissipated. As that happened, she calmed down. The next morning my reading was from Chapter 6.VII, The Lessons of the Holy Spirit. What struck me about that reading was that “nothing is accomplished through death”. And I knew that I had been thinking that about my aunt while she was in her tirade. If she were dead my life would be easier. And here was Jesus telling me, very directly, that would not be the case.

There was more change ahead for us all. My husband decided to retire and that meant my aunt’s visa would be revoked. She would have to go back home. Now I really had to open the conversation with her about moving to a senior residence of some sort. And I did.
It wasn’t easy. Holy Spirit got a lot of calls from me! But I persisted. I created a list of residences in her area of choice and presented them to her. She chose one, and I arranged a two week stay there so she could try it out. She loved the place though the room was small. We could not afford anything larger.

We had been noticing for the past several months that mentally my aunt was slipping; not remembering names, not able to operate the oven, and not feeding herself when we were away. Moving her to the residence would ease that worry for us. About a week after all the paperwork and travel plans were complete for her move, she spoke to one of her long-time friends. That friend would be in her city visiting at the time my aunt was moving there. My aunt was over the moon with excitement. Not in a million years would I ever have predicted that! Now she couldn’t wait to get going. We moved her on a Sunday, and I had until Thursday to unpack her things, get her banking and medical restarted, and her updated will signed. The week went through with ease and grace and even when something went wrong, I was able to use it as an opportunity.

With the guidance of my Course teacher, I found a moment on Thursday before I finally left to say to my aunt, “I appreciate you have lived with us for the past two years and I’ve not always been easy to get along with, and I want to apologize. But I hope that you are happy living here.” Her response was gracious, and we had a hug and maybe, for me anyway, the most genuine moment I’d had with her ever.

I don’t feel love toward my aunt, even now. But I don’t feel hate either. I have done the best I can with this relationship, and I am happy to say I feel we parted company on good terms. Maybe this is one of those relationships that heals better when we are not in the same space. For me, this time, in this relationship, I have stood up to the harassment. I have called on the Holy Spirit for help and healing. And I feel that I have left this relationship in a better state than I have any of the other difficult special relationships I’ve had. For that I will be grateful.

What amazes me most about this situation is that, somehow, the Holy Spirit has worked through my darkness, taken my little willingness, and allowed me to be of service to my aunt. Perhaps with time, full forgiveness and healing will come. For now, I stand in awe and gratitude.

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Release from guilt, as you would be released. There is no other way to look within and see the light of love shining as steadily and as surely as God Himself has always loved His Son. [CE T-13.XI.10:1-2]

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