What If You “Can’t Stand” a Member of Your Family?

I’ve been there myself. No matter what the cause with a blood relative, make up your antipathy and reconcile, before the next month’s calendar page turns. Death can intercede at any time; your ability to change the situation will thereby cease. 

You can never replace your family member. Moreover, he or she may love you very much indeed, and no one else can give you that individual’s particular perception of you.

We are defined by the attributes that others reflect to us. As William Butler Yeats wrote in “For Anne Gregory,”

“…only God, my dear/Could love you for yourself alone/And not your yellow hair.”