Walking away from my sister

[Featherlight]

Feeling so much pain and sadness. I have been trying to build a friendship with my sister over the last couple of years. I thought things between us were changing, getting better but then her daughter got married. I wasn’t invited to the wedding, nor was our brother. She is ashamed of both of us. He abused both me and her, she was only ten years old. I didn’t do anything but have lifelong mental health problems because of all the abuse from the whole family including her. I tried to support her as she wouldn’t go for any therapy. Now she is back in touch with our brother on quite friendly terms and she is ashamed of me.
I can’t stay in touch with her any more, the whole situation is too toxic. I feel devastated. I am crying for the little me who was abused by her whole family for her whole childhood and beyond. The pain of that feels crushing. I am crying because my sister has been the only person I have any contact with other than my T. Cutting contact with her will leave me totally isolated and I am terrified of that.
T suggested this week that I write a letter to my sister, one I don’t send to help me sort out my feelings. I finished it this morning, that’s what has stirred all this up.
Thank you for listening.

[Redisfinallyfree]

Hello Featherlight.

So sorry you are hurting. You will get through this. You are so much stronger than you realize right now. Being alone feels like a terrifying thing. I get it. Been through that myself. Because of so many unhealthy relationships in my past, I cut ties with everyone except my husband and children a few years ago, just before my healing journey started. I was surrounded by takers, including my birth family. I wore myself out with all of the giving and doing for and not being cared for in return. I had to let them all go. Had I not done that, I don’t think I would have started my healing journey. I can’t say I am thriving yet, but I’m struggling less and less with the pain of the past. These days, I’ve worked through the pain but I’m now dealing with the effects of abuse and how they shape how I live my life and relate to people.

I can relate to your pain of letting go of dysfunctional and/or abusive birth family after experiencing encouraging times with them in your life. In my own case, nothing ever got better for me until all of them had been out of my life completely for a couple of years. While they were in my life, I always felt so much stress and anxiety whenever I was in contact with my mother and two sisters. I had to walk on eggshells with all of them. I could not confront the issues from my childhood because I felt like I was wrapped in chains with padlocks on them that kept me from writing and sharing my story as an adult. I felt like I was breaking the laws of the universe to do that stuff.

It may feel like the worst thing now to not have your sister but if the relationship is not healthy, it may be for the best for a while. I missed my abusive older sister and even my abusive mother until I realized that I had been abused in August 2021. Now I know that those unhealthy relationships kept me from healing from the pain of my past. I didn’t really stop missing them until this summer after I started posting my story on isurvive. People here believed me and validated my thoughts and feelings and are helping me to heal. I know you did not choose this and that you do not want it. Learn to be your own friend. I don’t think we can do that with people who treat us like we don’t matter. They make us feel like nothing and that keeps us from making friends. Try to treat this time as your opportunity to work on yourself so that you will feel better about yourself and be able to move toward living the life you want to live. Maybe you can pursue your own interests or do puzzles or things that relax you. There is healing work to do for all of us. I promise you that even though the work is hard and sometimes is incredibly painful, it is absolutely worth the effort. Hang in there and never give up hope for a better future. You can work your way there. I hope this helps you.

Redisfinallyfree

[Featherlight]

Hello Redisfinallyfree

Thank you for writing to me, it helps a lot. Some things we can know in our heads for years but not really feel them, yesterday I felt such pain just at the knowledge that throughout my childhood they all abused me in different ways. I cut contact with my brother about five years ago and when I think back on it it was as painful as this even though he was being very abusive. It was the best thing and I have never missed his presence in my life. My sister is different, she is not blatantly abusive. It is subtle and keeps you wondering what is going on. I think the term may be a covert narcissist. If I suggest she is intending anything less than nice towards me she is horrified “How can you think I would do that?” I think I have to learn to trust my own perceptions.

I can relate to what you wrote about not being able to share your story, I feel like a traitor writing this. I’m definitely not allowed to do this. If I cut contact with sister she will be hurt and angry, that somehow feels much worse than brothers abuse. This stuff has so much power over us for our whole lives if we let it but I want something better than this. Featherlight wants to be finally free too!

I am very much alone but when I am feeling ok it doesn’t bother me much. I’m not much of a people person at the best of times, am quite happy with my arts and crafts and books. I need to keep reminding myself of that. I’m big now and can take care of myself, I don’t need family to do that for me.
Thank you again for writing to me, it helps so much that other people have been through this and survived. I read your posts about your sister and could relate so much but didn’t feel confident enough to post. Please know that writing here helps other people going through similar experiences so much.

[Redisfinallyfree]

Hi Featherlight,

You are going to be okay. You will get through this. For me, my birth family felt like they were the entire world for me for most of my life, even after I was married and had 3 children. I still sought to please them and to have peace with them and to try to fix everything wrong between me and them. Even after I realized that I had been abused by all of them in Aug. 2021, I missed feeling like I had a family soooo much. But, after a while of processing through the really bad abuse memories, I realized that anything good that I thought I remembered between us, was stuff they led me to believe was good. It was not real. They were always manipulative, self serving, abusers who were sometimes nice to me. Our relationships were always all about them having control over me and my life. My older sister only spent time with my children because she was trying to get them to like her more than they like me. When that was not working, she stopped contact with us abruptly. There was no fight. She just stopped coming over when I didn’t let her dictate rules for MY HOME that suited only herself. Occasionally she would call me and create anxiety and stress, still trying to get her own way. Then I quit calling her at all. I could not understand what had gone so horribly wrong and like always, I blamed myself. We had spent a LOT of time together and did have fun, but time with any of my birth family members was always a very stressful time that caused me to have diarrhea so frequently when I was with them that i had a constant supply of Immodium in my purse and it never reached expiration. Since they have been out of my life, I hardly ever have diarrhea and don’t need to keep Immodium on hand. Whatever peace or security I thought there was between my birth family and me was just familiarity. They were what i knew as family. They were unhealthy for me and I later discovered that my children were never comfortable with them either. I was hard to let go of the FANTASY of having a FAMILY with them. I went through the whole grieving process as the dream died. Then I realized that they NEVER were my family. They had always treated me as an outsider that they tried to boss around. They still do. Family helps you build your life. They bless you and care about you. My birth family has never been anything but destructive. They are completely resentful of anything good that I experience. That is NOT family.

I don’t know if any of this sounds familiar to you or not. I’m really sorry for you if it does. They don’t have to continue to be the definition of US. Take the time to focus on YOU. Remember the YOU that you were when you were little before they hurt you, if you can. I don’t think of myself as a people person today. But processing through my childhood experiences this summer reminded me that as a child, I WAS A PEOPLE PERSON. I loved going to community celebrations with lots of people around. I made friends quickly and easily until I was in my twenties. I wrote poems into my twenties. I drew into my twenties. I had forgotten all of that about myself. I realized that I had LEARNED to believe that I was not a people person, and that I had no creative abilities. My mother used to tell me in a round about way that if I wanted friends, I had to stop being myself. She was wrong. Because of my birth family, I HAD STOPPED BEING MY OUTGOING, CREATIVE SELF. I now realize that if I want friends, I have to remember how to BE myself.
Since I’ve started focusing on remembering who I really am, I don’t feel so lonely most of the time. I’ve developed some bad habits in how i treat myself that I am working on breaking. I am working on being kind and caring to myself. It’s slow going but it is going.
This isurvive community’s acceptance and encouragement are what family is SUPPOSED TO feel like. They are instrumental in helping me to keep going when I get to feeling really low. Writing this to you made me understand what made me decide to post something here when I had twice convinced myself that I didn’t belong here and was going to stop posting here. The isurvive community FEELS LIKE GOOD FAMILY when I am hurting. Everyone should have that. Everyone needs that. I need to clarify here that my husband and children are supportive for me but three of the four of them are on the autism spectrum. My husband and eldest daughter are moderate while my son is mild autistic. So, their empathy levels can leave me wanting. But also, as a mom, I don’t like to burden my children any more than I already have with the effects of this abuse stuff. They do support me and give comfort as best as they can.


Keep writing and telling your story. Write your story for yourself. Write as much and as often as you can. Post here what you feel comfortable sharing. There is FREEDOM in TELLING your story. There is HEALING in being believed, accepted, and cared about here.

I hope this helps you Featherlight and anyone else who is reading this. You are STRONG ENOUGH TO TELL. You are ALLOWED to tell your story. IT IS YOUR STORY TO TELL. The universe has no rules against telling. Those nasty rules were made by our ABUSERS. THEY ARE THE RULES THAT ARE MEANT TO BE BROKEN. Be free. Be you.

Redisfinallyfree

[Featherlight]

Hi Redisfinallyfree

A lot of your post is very familiar to me. I'm so sorry your family treated you the way they did. Recognising the past abuse is very hard, it feels as if the recognition makes everything shatter but in reality it was all broken for the whole of my life. It was just that it was my normal as a child, I didn't know families weren't supposed to be like that. I can remember being about 9 and beginning to have some awareness that my family were not nice. I was an avid reader and made up my own story that these people had stolen me and somewhere out there was my real family who loved me very much and would one day find me and take me home. It is sad to remember being that little girl.

I never had a "before the abuse" so I can only look forward and discover the good things as I go along. I am learning who I am and what I like and don't like. For so much of my life I had no idea how anyone knew what they did or didn't like, it was all the same to me but recently that has started to change and there are now things that I definitely like.

I think that maybe posting here is going to gain its own momentum. At times now I feel an internal pressure to pour everything out. Thank you so much for all you have written about telling my story. It feels so special that someone gave that to me, I want to wrap the post up safely and keep it forever. And I'm going to break those no telling rules and be free.

[Scars]

Dear Featherlight,
You are as beautiful and as strong as a feather. I love your name and signature, by the way.
I hope you never lose sight of the hope that you have now, that even though you will have to do some hard things in order to heal, like walk away from you sister, they are necessary to achieve your goal.
There is a place here for unsent letters/ unspoken words. You may want to read some of those, or post your own. I find writing letters very helpful. I honor the hurt I felt and get some distance from it at the same time.
Keep reaching out, we want to offer you some much needed comfort and help you feel like you are a part of our community here.
scars

[Featherlight]

Dear Scars, thank you for writing to me. I love how your name started as one thing and grew into another.
Thank you for your kind words and hopes for me. I will read some of the letters here. Although it was very painful I did find writing a letter to my sister to be very helpful. I knew what I was feeling by the end of writing it. It got all of the muddle out of my head and put it in order.
I hope that in time I can feel like I belong here.

[there]

Hi, Featherlight,
I have different particulars, but similar stuff with my sister.
It's been up for me recently , and is still rocking my soul.

I just wanted to tell you I sincerely empathize.