🧵 Thursday Thread: What About Siblings?
How have your siblings influenced your life, even if through their absence in the case of only children or estrangement or loss?
One quick announcement before this week’s thread on siblings—arguably among the most formative forces in our lives. And I can’t wait to hear your thoughts and stories. But first …
We’re hosting a fun live salon with open mic on Zoom today to celebrate our work in the Delights (Joy & Sorrow) intensive, and also to celebrate just surviving this far into 2025. The salon is TODAY, 2 PM CENTRAL for paid members! Zoom link sent around noon Central so watch for it/check your promo folder.
If you’ve never been to one of our salons, join us! They’re inspiring and fun. You don’t have to read, either. Also, to note: live salons are technically for founding members only, but with the chaos of AWP last week, we (I) really dropped the ball on announcing/reminding you of this one, so we’re flinging wide the doors to ensure a lively crowd.
That said, founding memberships are only $15 more than an annual membership, with really special extras that help us build this interactive and sustainable community—e.g., voice memos and video notes, live salons on zoom, candlelight yoga nidra sessions, etc. If you value gathering with me and Billie Oh and other WITD members in real time, seeing faces and hearing voices, the founding level is totally worth it because it’s only nominally more per year yet adds up to help us offer more value to more people and build a stronger, more vital community, so we really appreciate our founders a lot, a lot, a lot.
And now for the sibling thread!
First, I love Billie’s illustration for this post. It comes from a photo of Max pushing Billie in the tree swing at our old house, the one my kids grew up in. In the drawing (and in the photo) Billie is wearing their little baby doll on their chest in the same baby-bundler style I wore them for several years.
This image, Max pushing Billie on the swing, so aptly captures something essential in their relationship. Max is the older brother—bigger, stronger, and most of all, in charge. In childhood, he was Billie’s most loyal supporter and friend, as well as “the boss of them” and, occasionally, their tormentor. Today, they are close friends, talking often and seeing each other in person at least once a week, just as often without me as with me, which brings me joy. I could say so much more about the sibling-ness between my adult children, but I won’t—those are their stories to tell—but I will say it means a lot to me, watching them navigate these waters of adult sibling relationship.
"Brothers and sisters are the people we practice on, the people who teach us about fairness and cooperation and kindness and caring — quite often the hard way." - Pamela Dugdale
As for my own sisters, I grew up in the shadow of my big sister, 20 months older. She was the adored one, the golden child with the long, smooth hair. She was good. I was the one with the messy shag haircut who could never “get that look off my face.” This dynamic shaped our relationship through childhood and adolescence. To better understand how it was, I can just tell you that whenever we had to split something good—candy, a cookie, whatever—our rule was that whoever broke it in half, the other person would get to pick which half they wanted. So my sister would split it unevenly then take a giant bite out of the big half before saying, “which one?”
My little sister was six years younger than me—an entirely different dynamic. She was my baby, my pest, my security blanket, my sidekick, my annoyance. I was her babysitter and her friend. I adored her and thanks to the large age gap, really never tormented her other than talking her into doing a LOT of prank calls (this was the 1980s, when prank calls were still fun). The funniest prank calls we used to do were when my sister would call people and tell them they’d won the jackpot in Dialing for Dollars on the radio. We also loved the one where she would call the radio stations and ask if the DJ “wanted to chat.” We thought it was so hilarious. “I’m lonely,” she would say, at age 5 or 6. “Let’s chat.” I can see it’s not as funny now as it was then. I tried to protect my little sister, but mostly failed. I was a pretty shitty mother at age 9, 10, 11, etc.
I could go on—people write whole books about sibling relationships—but instead I’ll simply say that in childhood, my sisters saved my life. And their combined influences made me both a scrappier fighter and a better nurturer. Our lives have been deeply complicated by parental trauma and its long aftermath, but we are still connected in adulthood. We’re still trying.
What about your siblings? Or, if you were an only child, what were your views of siblings (wish you had them/glad you didn’t), and why?
Love,
Jeannine
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