I was having a lovely ladies lunch.  It was when I was working as a fundraiser for .  When you’re asking people for money, they’ll often take you out for the nicest meals. Maybe it’s easier to say no on a full stomach. Carol took me to . The development officer’s job is to build relationships with the donors. It’s easy to become friends and to slip into conversations that have nothing to do with the cause. On that fall afternoon, Carol was telling me how she came to live in Chicago and how wonderful it was to live so far away from her mother. She slipped it into a statement about her job and Michigan Avenue shopping in a perfectly natural way. I had to ask, “Don’t you like your mother?” That was the opener for a lengthy chat about the dark side of mother-daughter relationships. Up until that afternoon, I never realized that there are real women who really don’t like their mothers. Carol was equally surprised that I sincerely liked mine. Read next feature >