A LETTER TO MY ESTRANGED SISTERS

This morning, I found myself thinking about my sisters. When I sat to write, this is what came through. I mostly left it alone and only changed a few words for clarity.

Dear Sisters,

I come to you today with an unguarded heart.

Sometimes when my mind and heart wander, like when I am in the shower, or folding laundry, or when something in particular reminds me of you, I think of you and wonder if you are well and happy. I sincerely pray that you are. Sometimes I think of you and I am filled with warmth, other times sadness, due to the fallout of our relationships and the loss of so many years.

I know that each of us experienced our childhood uniquely.

Each of us endured different and difficult experiences, some shared and some not. We have each ascribed meaning to those experiences; we decided what it meant about ourselves, our parents, each other, and what it meant about life. We see through different lenses.

We each went through a war of sorts and we dealt with the fallout of those years in our own ways, too. Some memories we share are wonderful, of course, but it isn’t the love that drives us apart, it’s the injuries.

I have no desire to challenge or change your perceptions of the personal battles you endured. We each, really, have no idea what the others endured. We may have witnessed some events, shared others, and even talked about others, but no one knows what it felt like inside of us. How could we? Yet we carried the pain of those experiences into adulthood, and we each did the best we could to bear that weight.

There was a long time, a very long time, when I felt responsible for you and for your happiness. Since childhood, I often felt that you were not only Mama’s girls, but mine. I had a lot of responsibility for you at a very early age. I wanted to protect you from suffering. And ironically, some of your sufferings have come through me, because I too was a child and later a wounded adult, and I too was hurting. We often acted out our inherited pain on each other as children, and into adulthood.

Growing up in our family, with all its chaos and confusion, manipulation and misinformation, abuse and abandonment, it is no surprise that we carried battle scars. Those were difficult days for all of us, each with our own burdens to bear. I had no idea then about boundaries, emotional sobriety, generational trauma, how to discern truth from lies, or how to make my way toward healing from growing up in a dysfunctional family. But now, by the grace of God, the 12 Steps, and lots of committed healing work in community, I do.

It’s true that we will never have the relationships we once had. And like me, I’m sure you don’t want that old way of relating anymore either.

For a long time, I was terrified of falling back into those old patterns and roles of our relationship. Some of our history was romanticized, some traumatized, and some of it over-dramatized. We were lost in the roles we learned to play. We were lost in a dance we didn’t design. We don’t have to be any longer.

Should we ever meet in person again, or speak on the phone after all these years, it will not be the same. We are not the same people we were 10 or 20 years ago. Life has taught us many things during our separation. I’m sure much of which we couldn’t have possibly learned had we stayed stuck in the old family patterns of hurt and the roles we felt we must replay from the past and act out upon each other.

I now know that I am not responsible for you and your happiness. Perhaps you have always known that, but I didn’t.

I now know I have no desire nor energy to hash out the hurts of the past, prove myself right or wrong, or mold myself into a shape that suits others. I know what I know and no longer have a need for you to know it, too. You have your own truths, experiences, hopes, and dreams that have absolutely nothing to do with me or my perceptions.

It’s hard to convey all I hope to say here in a short letter. Too many times in my life with you, I have overcompensated by going too far with my feelings and trying too hard to mend things between us. Looking back, it wasn’t emotionally clean communication and still had lots of sticky needs attached to it. I release myself and you from old expectations and needing anything from each other. I send you only love.

If nothing else comes through this writing, hear this:

I do love you. I care about your happiness, and your family, cheer on your good fortune when I hear of it, pray for you, and wish you nothing but your heart’s desires. Life is clearly too short for anything else and the weight of old injuries is just too heavy for me to carry around any longer. The days of holding hurt, anger, and resentment are long gone, softened by the many years gone by and the work of owning my part in our story and taking responsibility for it, and moving forward. Those details don’t belong here in this public forum. But if you ever want to hear the amends I would give you, I am here to share them from my heart.

And if we never meet or talk again, I will still smile and wish you well in my heart when I hear of you. It is entirely possible that remaining separate from each other’s lives might have just allowed us to each, in our own way, and in our own little families, to create our own version of happy, healthy lives.

I no longer want to force anything. I trust in the slow work of God. Whenever we meet again, in this life or the next, I will greet you with open arms and an unguarded heart.

xo Mary

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A PROMPT FOR YOU

What can I do today to bring more peace to my body and soul?

What can I do today to contribute my peace to the body and soul of our world?

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I hope you’ll keep in touch. If you are more comfortable responding privately, simply reply to this email. Either way, I’ll get back to you. Thank you for reading.

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