When Your Mother-in-Law is Mean

What if the people who challenge us the most are actually helping us become who we came here to be? 

In this episode of Where's the Honey?, Rebecca shares the surprising lessons she learned from years of navigating a difficult relationship with her former mother-in-law. Through honest stories, humor, and spiritual insight, she explores why life's "button pushers" may be some of our greatest teachers.

Instead of asking, "Why is this person in my life?" Rebecca asks a different question:

Where's the honey?

You'll discover how difficult relationships can strengthen your boundaries, soften your heart, and reveal hidden wisdom you may never have found otherwise. Whether you're dealing with a challenging family member, coworker, friend, or anyone who regularly tests your patience, this episode offers a fresh perspective that can bring more peace—and maybe even appreciation—to those relationships.

You'll learn:
• Why difficult people often reveal our greatest opportunities for growth
• To stop giving others access to your emotional buttons
• Why everyone's behavior has a deeper story behind it
• How changing your expectations before an interaction can change the outcome
• How to find the "honey" hidden inside life's most challenging relationships

Because even difficult people may have something sweet to teach us.

Stay sweet.

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HoneyinEverything.com
rebecca@HoneyinEverything.com

A big TY to CreativeCommons.org
Audiorezout. 14.Be Happy.mp3
for the music. 

Transcript

Where’s The Honey In Mean?

Rebecca 0:03

Where's the honey when your mother-in-law is mean? Or anyone else that you interact with regularly is just mean. Is there purpose to that? Is there anything good in there? I believe there is. And you all know that I honestly believe there's honey in absolutely everything. So let's look for it. I'll use my own life as an example. My ex-mother-in-law, who is passed, was a tough, hardcore, demanding, stubborn, a whole lot of other adjectives like that, kind of woman. Her name was Rose, which generally stands for love, passion, caring, courage. And she honestly had all of those. But it was very hard to find it in her or to see it, especially initially. You could see her soft side here and there, but mostly she was just tough. My ex-husband's friends from high school when we'd run into them would say, "Do you do you get along, you know, with your mother-in-law?" Because they knew. And I'd say, "Yeah, I actually do. It's not necessarily always easy, but it's all right." I would jokingly say she could go through a checkout line and have the cashier in tears before the transaction was completed. I mean, it's just the way she was. She loved family time, babies especially, she loved to feed everybody. She expected you to follow her house rules. She would have dinner every Sunday, holidays, etc. for the families. And we were expected to be there. We also knew that no matter how many kids were there, no matter what age the kids were, that house had to look as good, if not better, than it did before we all got there.

Meeting Rose And Her Rules

Rebecca 2:00

She had a very good memory. Out of nowhere, she would say something like, "Well, you know, that dollar I gave you back in 1998...?" She would just remember details like that and use them. It was like she kept them in her back pocket so she could use them later. It was odd. She and her husband never took vacations, didn't really go on many outings. Pretty much stayed around town. She worked very close to where they lived until she retired.

Rebecca 2:31

She and her other two sons yelled at kids a lot. My ex-husband and I were very different. He was more like his dad, I guess. And it was always my thought to, for example, my ex-father-in-law had a huge garden, which he loved and gave a lot of time to. And as the kids were little and playing ball in the yard, a ball would go in the garden, and of course, one of the kids would go running in there after it, and you'd hear screaming, "Get out of the garden!" whack, whack, you know. They would just yell at the kids repeatedly, and then finally one day I said to them, "Why don't we tell them why you don't want them to go in the garden?" And they said, "What?" And I said, "Well, if you tell them why, like Pappy plants those seeds, he works the dirt and he waters them and he tends after all of those plants every day. And if you go tearing through there to get your ball and you step on his plants, they'll break and he'll be really sad." So that's what I did. I took the kids, even the little ones in diapers, and I explained that to them. And I said, "So when a ball goes in there, stop for a minute and just tiptoe in there and stay between the plants and go ahead and get that ball." And they they followed suit. They did it. Of course, we had to remind them a couple times because kids learn by repetition. So that was my approach. Their approach was to yell and scream and maybe whack a kid once in a while. So, I was the 'too nice' one. I was just too sensitive, easygoing, vulnerable. I was raised in a totally different kind of, well, kinds of traumas, kinds of situations, in a more like what people might call average family environment. So it was, I guess, particularly easy for her to push my buttons. And that's the whole point. When you have buttons out there to be pushed, life will hook you up with some button pushers. So through years of just tolerating that, learning how to navigate her, and her two of her sons, because they were a lot like her, I was learning. It took me a while to realize it, but I was learning. And eventually I figured out she was too. There came a time, when the kids were younger but they'd been around her long enough to sort of have the fear of Rose put in them. She had a some kind of a throat surgery or procedure done, and she wasn't allowed to talk. She was not supposed to talk for several days. And it was so funny because the kids would come and say, " Grammy is being nice!" They were just stunned. They hadn't really see that side of her before. You could, like I said, she wasn't 100% mean so everybody could see it here and there, but they got a totally different perspective because she couldn't use her gruff, harsh voice. She would give them treats and use gestures to talk to them. And they just they saw a whole different side of her.

Button Pushers And Being Too Nice

Rebecca 5:40

And so did everyone else. But I realized then, you know, she is softening. I can see it. She's not as rough and as gruff as she was. So little by little by little over the years, and as I was learning to look for the honey, I realized that we were each other's teachers. She was teaching me to get a backbone. In other words, to be stronger, not to be so taken advantage of or pushed around or whatever, so just darn polite that you put up with things, to speak up. And I was teaching her to soften, to be her natural self, not to be so guarded. Because over time I learned a little bit more about her upbringing, her earlier life. And I saw that she had a very rough childhood. She had brothers who were bullies, and parents who saw kids as workers. So it was a sort of fend for yourself, fight for what you want, get them before they get you, kind of life. She learned before anybody even stood a chance to take her down or embarrass her or whatever, she would she would get them first. To me, it felt like she had built this wall o r this bubble of protection around her that was hard. But on the inside, as she became a little less closed off all the time, I started to see that she had a really big heart, but she had to protect it. She was very, very sensitive, but she had to protect it. She felt like that was a problem, and that couldn't be, you can't put that out there. There was a time when in a conversation, I realized that she was pregnant before they got married. I didn't see a problem with that. I lived in a whole different world than than she did back then. And so I said to her, "Oh, so you were pregnant before you got married." Oh man, did she get mad!! I never mentioned it again because to her, and I said to her, "You know, it's okay." And she said, "No, it wasn't." And I said, "All right, I get it. Back when you were younger, that was a big deal." They did what people thought was the right thing. They got married, and for them it worked out, but she didn't want it mentioned, she didn't want to talk about it. That was something that should never be spoken. And we were just in her house, it was all adults, I was out in public spreading the word, but it was important for her not to talk about that. Her perspective was very different than mine, but we were able to complement each in ways that are kind of weird, but that's how life is. You know, as I learned to stop letting her push my buttons, because I didn't have as many buttons out there to push anymore. She was learning you don't have to push buttons, you don't have to attack people or insult people or tell people what to do. There are other ways, there are other approaches that are just better for everybody.

Rebecca 9:05

There was one time, I was just thinking about, when I learned how to do energy work and balance the body's energy. They all thought the things I believed in were crazy and didn't make any sense, and that was fine with me. I felt no reason to defend myself. I just be'd who I be'd. Eventually, they started to realize that I wasn't weird, I guess. And one day somebody said something about, "Well, that you know, that energy thing you do, like, well, what is that?" So I explained it and before I knew it, I was bringing my massage table up on Sundays, and just about everybody, every Sunday, wanted some energy work done. Until... one day I was setting up the table and I heard my husband in the kitchen say to his brother's wife, "Wow, this is really good pie you made." She picked berries at her dad's property and made a couple of berry pies. And he said, "Oh, this pie is really good. Could you make me one?" And then I heard my mother-in-law say, "Well, if you pay her, she might make you one." And I thought, oh, yeah, right. I'm gonna do energy work on her and her family for nothing, just because we're family. That was the last time I brought my table. I thought, you know, that was a button that got pushed, and only because I was just too nice, Here I am doing this while everybody else is lounging, having fun, and I'm in there working basically. I thought, no, you don't have to be this nice, you don't have to be pushed around like that. So that was the end of that.

Softening Over Time And Hard Histories

Rebecca 10:20

The point I'm making here is, even though she was mean, I was way too nice, there was a purpose, I believe, to why we spent some years in each other's lives. There was benefit there. And if we're willing to look and realize we don't have to like all the ways that we learn and expand, but we're here, we're gonna do this. We came for this.

Rebecca 11:18

So, what if we're all each other's teachers? What if the difficult people or even the difficult times in your life are your best teachers in disguise? What if before you even came here, you set that up for yourself? What if you knew there were some things you wanted to expand about, or you could say God wanted you to expand about if you prefer that, while you're here and put the right players in there? So you may not like some people or some details of your life, but what honey is in there? When you're willing to look and say, "I don't like this person, or I don't like this situation, or I don't like this health condition. But, what's in there? Where's the honey? The sticky stuff that stays with you, that enhances you. We just have to be willing to look for it. And I don't think it's really all that hard to see it. And that's I do this podcas t... to help all of us keep our perspective in that light of "Even though I want to say this is bad or wrong, if I can step back and look at it from a broader perspective, I'll see that there's usefulness here. There's wisdom to gain here, there's some good stuff that I'll take with me for the rest of my life."

Boundaries Without Resentment

Rebecca 12:50

So it took me a while. I mean, the more I learned and the more experience I had around her and her family, I was able to see the honey, the value. And I did love her. And I even loved her for being her, and even changing over time. But, although I saw the honey and I made my peace with all of it, after the divorce, I really felt no desire to continue a relationship with them, with her, her sons, her husband, even. I would still invite them to a maybe like a baby shower or whatever, and I was always very nice, but there was just nothing there anymore that I guess I was needing to learn or experience or expand from. I just had no desire to stop in to visit to say hi. It was kind of a strange thing, that's just the way it was. And the so the point I'm making there is, just because somebody is your " teacher" in a weird way, doesn't mean that has to be an entire lifetime relationship. You may get to the point where you think, "No, you know what, I'm good. I don't want to be friends with this person anymore, or I don't want to be sharing any part of my life with this person", not out of resentment. It doesn't serve you at all to do it out of pain or resentment or whatever, but when you just really get to that okay place where you think, "No, you know, actually I'm good", then you don't have to continue that relationship if it doesn't light up for you. Sometimes relationships like that change so much that you really end up having a nice relationship with that person out of maybe honor, respect, love. So I hope I've made my point that even though somebody's mean and you are kind of feeling obligated to be around them, even if it's once in a while, look for the good stuff.

Pre-Programming Peace And A Giveaway

Rebecca 14:50

Like I always say, pre-program it before you even see them the next time. That's something I learned to do later -after all that experience- before you even go t o a dinner with that person or whatever it might be. Think (you're already thinking about it), and you're probably thinking, "Oh God, no, it's just gonna be bad." You're probably grumbling inside about having to have that person around. Instead, why not think thoughts like, "Well, I don't know, maybe I'll get the good side of her this time. Maybe she'll be in a better mood. Maybe there will be so many things going on, we won't even have to interact." So when you set that up, because we're always thinking forward like that, we're always thinking about things before they happen, you're putting a better energy into it, you're walking into it now with a completely different attitude, without being worried or afraid, or upset, or guarded. You walk in thinking, "I as far as I know, life's working out for me. So this could go well too."

Rebecca 15:54

If you know someone who has a difficult person in their life and you think this might be useful, please share it, pass it on, subscribe, like. And !... if you've listened this far in, I thank you for that! I want to send a few gifts out just to help, as little reminders to help you remember to look for the honey. So for the first and the fifth listener who emails me, at Rebecca@HoneyInEverything.com with 'There's Honey in Everything' in the subject line, write whatever you want the body, say Hi, share your thoughts. You don't have to put anything in the body if you don't want to. I'll email you back and I'll ask for your mailing address so that I can send you a gift just to show my appreciation and to help you remember to look for the honey. So thank you. I appreciate you. And until next time, you can find me at HoneyInEverything.com.