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<blockquote data-quote="Scent of Cedar *" data-source="post: 658538" data-attributes="member: 17461"><p>I like that you sign "Copa * still whole and strong."</p><p></p><p>I am going to start thinking of myself that way. Whole and strong. I really like that you do that, Copa.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Oh, that's a really good thing to do, SWOT. Now you have valid proof from someone who knows what healthy relationship between sisters would look like.</p><p></p><p>That is the thing we need to know how to proceed. Clarity about whether we need to be more understanding and less judgmental, or whether our sisters' behaviors are part of the initial family toxicity we are trying to pin down and respond differently to.</p><p></p><p>It is hard to know which it is.</p><p></p><p>It feels wrong to make judgments. Especially to me. I don't want to be like my mother in those ways. That is why this is so difficult. In a way, it's like what I was doing with my kids. I was not the strong mother they needed when the problems were such tough ones. Then too, as you noted earlier, there is the issue of guilt for all the things I did that were wrong, where my kids, and especially, where our sisters are concerned. That weakens us, too. For me, it helps to remember that when I did those things, I was just a little girl, too. But when I think of them now, as an adult, they shame me because I am expecting adult behaviors from the child that I was. When I look back at the wrong things I have done, I am seeing from an adult's perspective.</p><p></p><p>But I was just a little kid, too.</p><p></p><p>Just a messed up little kid, too.</p><p></p><p>But I really did try to do the best I knew, once I got it that what I was doing was not who or how I wanted to be.</p><p></p><p>Every time, I did that.</p><p></p><p>This is true.</p><p></p><p>But I think our guilt over not having been perfect or anywhere near it (there is that word again ~ perfect) but only human little girls who were sometimes spiteful or rageful or angry or inappropriate in any of a thousand ways weakens us, today. Whatever it is motivating our sisters, they certainly do seem not to have our best interests, or the best interests of the family either, at heart.</p><p></p><p>But they are adults, now. </p><p></p><p>So they are making an informed choice whereas when we were behaving in ways we wish we hadn't, we were just little girls.</p><p></p><p>That is the difference.</p><p></p><p>Parentification is in here somewhere, too. Poorly parented myself in so many ways ~ and I am sure I was well parented too, in many ways. But I was not able to balance everything that needed balancing very well. It must be, and have been, a hateful thing for my sister to have had to accept whatever nurturance there was from a sister she hated because what she needed was a mother.</p><p></p><p>But here is the difference: So did I.</p><p></p><p>I never even suspected that before we began going through all this about our FOO. But it is very true that you were, and that I was, and that Copa was too, just a little girl doing the best she could.</p><p></p><p>I wish I'd been stronger. I wish I'd been better and kinder and etc. </p><p></p><p>But I was just a little kid, too.</p><p></p><p>Well, I am getting stronger, now.</p><p></p><p>Why all these things happened doesn't matter. Each of the sibs is an adult, and is making adult choices, just like I am.</p><p></p><p>I would just like, for once in my life, to see what to hay they are really doing.</p><p></p><p>It doesn't look good.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I have wondered before how this piece fits in where our sisters are concerned. Why would they call us like they do, if they neither like nor trust nor respect us? Was that some weird kind of game too, to get us to reveal secret things about our relationships, or about the ways we felt about our mothers, or...? (See what I mean about the rotten way I am thinking, now?)</p><p></p><p>But why do they do that?</p><p></p><p>Why do those same people who seem to choose us as sounding boards because together, we can figure a thing out ~ like, why would they go through our journals or our luggage or stalk us on Facebook?</p><p></p><p>Those two things just don't go together.</p><p></p><p>But your sisters seem to do the same kinds of things. So, those pieces must fit together in a way I cannot see yet. But I always did wonder about that similarity between ourselves and our sisters.</p><p></p><p>Is this normal between sisters?</p><p></p><p>Maybe it is.</p><p></p><p>If anyone is reading who has a normal sister, what is your opinion on this question.</p><p></p><p>I have a friend with normal sisters. They enjoy being together. They do things like travel hundreds of miles to dress up and watch the Oscars on television together.</p><p></p><p>She says my relationship to my sister, and to my mother, is not good. Regarding the mess that happened around my father's death, she says: "Dysfunctional family, dysfunctional death; that is when the skeletons come rattling out."</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Here is a question: Why do these kinds of things seem to affect our sisters this way? I see other families on my FB page, and they are all together with friends posting in (or friending me) and etc.</p><p></p><p>That target part rings true for me. I am on FB, but not so often, but my sister ~ like, one time? She had a boyfriend and his friend here for dinner, and here for the 4th of July and we went out for dinner and etc. So, we have come to know them too, through that time. And I said, "Well, if you come through next summer, call us. We would love to see you both again." (They, the two male friends, were motorcycle touring, and this was something they did every summer.) And my sister was upset about that, and said they should not come here without her. And I felt that was probably valid. If it hadn't bothered her, then it would have been fine, but since it did, then my position had to be loyalty to my sister. And I never really thought about that again, but I am thinking about it this morning.</p><p></p><p>But I feel like I am being a poop, to think like that, because of course I should not have invited them without my sister.</p><p></p><p>?</p><p></p><p>Except that it was a casual invitation kind of thing, not an exclusion. But maybe it was an exclusion. So maybe, I am the excluder here, but I don't think so.</p><p></p><p>So this is how my brain works, and I left it in on the off chance it will help one of us to see that circle that I make until I cannot see anything but that I should not have done whatever it was.</p><p></p><p>So: In clarity, I would say that as the two men were friends, and were here with us more than once, and were invited to our 4th of July family event and so on, that it was okay to invite them if they came through again in a way it would not have been okay to do that if it were my sister and her boyfriend and I invited him to come back alone.</p><p></p><p>So I am good on that one, then.</p><p></p><p>I don't think I was trying to come between my sister and her boyfriend, like my mother.</p><p></p><p>But that was the question.</p><p></p><p>Not whether whatever I did was wrong or right, but whether I was behaving like my mother.</p><p></p><p>That is the secret question under most things. That is the reason this still bothers me when it happened something like fifteen years ago at least.</p><p></p><p>D H and I wanted to go to the place the (now ex) boyfriend owned a supper club / bar with music to see him when we visited my sister after her marriage. She did not want to, and she did not want us to, either. She said her new husband would be upset by that. Yet, she has other former boyfriends in her life ~ boyfriends who were around when her oldest daughter was little.</p><p></p><p>But I don't want to blunder into being my mother.</p><p></p><p>That is probably the core of the guilt piece I feel beneath much of ~ not all of, but much of ~ what goes on between my sister and me.</p><p></p><p>Well, I don't know what to do with much of this.</p><p></p><p>So I won't post anymore about that.</p><p></p><p>But I don't think I was doing that. D H wanted to go there, thought it would be really fun to see those two men again, too.</p><p></p><p>At some point, there was a motorcycle accident. The friend was killed. The other man is dead now too, but I don't remember how that happened.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Well, this is true about my sister, too. I have seen her do that to ex-husbands and an ex-son in law and his family. </p><p></p><p>I mean, she did something, pursued a thing, that was not...I don't know. It just didn't seem right, what she did. And the upshot was that the other grands are out of the golden grands life altogether.</p><p></p><p>And that was their first grand, and they hadn't done anything wrong. But they have a different lifestyle, less money, less stuff for sure, than my sister.</p><p></p><p>In a way though, that is what having strong boundaries looks like, isn't it? Like, you are not always wandering around trying to figure out what is the kind thing or whatever. I am still in contact with the family of the male who hurt our daughter. We're not calling on the phone or anything, but I like to see what they are up to on FB and so on. I want them to recover, too. It was an awful thing for all of us. It is an awful thing that their son or brother or uncle is where he is and that my daughter was hurt.</p><p></p><p>Circles within circles, right? What I do is right for me. What my sister does is right, for her.</p><p></p><p>But I don't like that exclusion thing she does to our family, and I don't have an ounce of compassion or pity or anything but rank hatred for her over what she did to my daughter when she was so out of it. </p><p></p><p>But as I posted, our daughter took her right down to the short hairs on that one. My daughter can be kind and compassionate and so on? But she takes no s***.</p><p></p><p>So, that's good, then.</p><p></p><p>I am that way too, now that I think of it. I have no problem at all saying what I believe. Once I can figure out what it is.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I think it's funny, too.</p><p></p><p>I should go stalking my sister on FB. But that is the thing. I have no interest in stalking her. I never did. She was just someone in my life that I wanted to do well, and be happy. I did not need to know every detail.</p><p></p><p>But then, I never once thought about going through her luggage, either.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Oh, that's a good way to see it, SWOT.</p><p></p><p>I will begin thinking those words where my sister is concerned.</p><p></p><p>When you get right down to it, what you posted is the truth of the thing.</p><p></p><p>No villain, and no hero role, either.</p><p></p><p>Yes. I like that very much.</p><p></p><p>Thank you.</p><p></p><p>:O)</p><p></p><p>Cedar</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Scent of Cedar *, post: 658538, member: 17461"] I like that you sign "Copa * still whole and strong." I am going to start thinking of myself that way. Whole and strong. I really like that you do that, Copa. Oh, that's a really good thing to do, SWOT. Now you have valid proof from someone who knows what healthy relationship between sisters would look like. That is the thing we need to know how to proceed. Clarity about whether we need to be more understanding and less judgmental, or whether our sisters' behaviors are part of the initial family toxicity we are trying to pin down and respond differently to. It is hard to know which it is. It feels wrong to make judgments. Especially to me. I don't want to be like my mother in those ways. That is why this is so difficult. In a way, it's like what I was doing with my kids. I was not the strong mother they needed when the problems were such tough ones. Then too, as you noted earlier, there is the issue of guilt for all the things I did that were wrong, where my kids, and especially, where our sisters are concerned. That weakens us, too. For me, it helps to remember that when I did those things, I was just a little girl, too. But when I think of them now, as an adult, they shame me because I am expecting adult behaviors from the child that I was. When I look back at the wrong things I have done, I am seeing from an adult's perspective. But I was just a little kid, too. Just a messed up little kid, too. But I really did try to do the best I knew, once I got it that what I was doing was not who or how I wanted to be. Every time, I did that. This is true. But I think our guilt over not having been perfect or anywhere near it (there is that word again ~ perfect) but only human little girls who were sometimes spiteful or rageful or angry or inappropriate in any of a thousand ways weakens us, today. Whatever it is motivating our sisters, they certainly do seem not to have our best interests, or the best interests of the family either, at heart. But they are adults, now. So they are making an informed choice whereas when we were behaving in ways we wish we hadn't, we were just little girls. That is the difference. Parentification is in here somewhere, too. Poorly parented myself in so many ways ~ and I am sure I was well parented too, in many ways. But I was not able to balance everything that needed balancing very well. It must be, and have been, a hateful thing for my sister to have had to accept whatever nurturance there was from a sister she hated because what she needed was a mother. But here is the difference: So did I. I never even suspected that before we began going through all this about our FOO. But it is very true that you were, and that I was, and that Copa was too, just a little girl doing the best she could. I wish I'd been stronger. I wish I'd been better and kinder and etc. But I was just a little kid, too. Well, I am getting stronger, now. Why all these things happened doesn't matter. Each of the sibs is an adult, and is making adult choices, just like I am. I would just like, for once in my life, to see what to hay they are really doing. It doesn't look good. I have wondered before how this piece fits in where our sisters are concerned. Why would they call us like they do, if they neither like nor trust nor respect us? Was that some weird kind of game too, to get us to reveal secret things about our relationships, or about the ways we felt about our mothers, or...? (See what I mean about the rotten way I am thinking, now?) But why do they do that? Why do those same people who seem to choose us as sounding boards because together, we can figure a thing out ~ like, why would they go through our journals or our luggage or stalk us on Facebook? Those two things just don't go together. But your sisters seem to do the same kinds of things. So, those pieces must fit together in a way I cannot see yet. But I always did wonder about that similarity between ourselves and our sisters. Is this normal between sisters? Maybe it is. If anyone is reading who has a normal sister, what is your opinion on this question. I have a friend with normal sisters. They enjoy being together. They do things like travel hundreds of miles to dress up and watch the Oscars on television together. She says my relationship to my sister, and to my mother, is not good. Regarding the mess that happened around my father's death, she says: "Dysfunctional family, dysfunctional death; that is when the skeletons come rattling out." Here is a question: Why do these kinds of things seem to affect our sisters this way? I see other families on my FB page, and they are all together with friends posting in (or friending me) and etc. That target part rings true for me. I am on FB, but not so often, but my sister ~ like, one time? She had a boyfriend and his friend here for dinner, and here for the 4th of July and we went out for dinner and etc. So, we have come to know them too, through that time. And I said, "Well, if you come through next summer, call us. We would love to see you both again." (They, the two male friends, were motorcycle touring, and this was something they did every summer.) And my sister was upset about that, and said they should not come here without her. And I felt that was probably valid. If it hadn't bothered her, then it would have been fine, but since it did, then my position had to be loyalty to my sister. And I never really thought about that again, but I am thinking about it this morning. But I feel like I am being a poop, to think like that, because of course I should not have invited them without my sister. ? Except that it was a casual invitation kind of thing, not an exclusion. But maybe it was an exclusion. So maybe, I am the excluder here, but I don't think so. So this is how my brain works, and I left it in on the off chance it will help one of us to see that circle that I make until I cannot see anything but that I should not have done whatever it was. So: In clarity, I would say that as the two men were friends, and were here with us more than once, and were invited to our 4th of July family event and so on, that it was okay to invite them if they came through again in a way it would not have been okay to do that if it were my sister and her boyfriend and I invited him to come back alone. So I am good on that one, then. I don't think I was trying to come between my sister and her boyfriend, like my mother. But that was the question. Not whether whatever I did was wrong or right, but whether I was behaving like my mother. That is the secret question under most things. That is the reason this still bothers me when it happened something like fifteen years ago at least. D H and I wanted to go to the place the (now ex) boyfriend owned a supper club / bar with music to see him when we visited my sister after her marriage. She did not want to, and she did not want us to, either. She said her new husband would be upset by that. Yet, she has other former boyfriends in her life ~ boyfriends who were around when her oldest daughter was little. But I don't want to blunder into being my mother. That is probably the core of the guilt piece I feel beneath much of ~ not all of, but much of ~ what goes on between my sister and me. Well, I don't know what to do with much of this. So I won't post anymore about that. But I don't think I was doing that. D H wanted to go there, thought it would be really fun to see those two men again, too. At some point, there was a motorcycle accident. The friend was killed. The other man is dead now too, but I don't remember how that happened. Well, this is true about my sister, too. I have seen her do that to ex-husbands and an ex-son in law and his family. I mean, she did something, pursued a thing, that was not...I don't know. It just didn't seem right, what she did. And the upshot was that the other grands are out of the golden grands life altogether. And that was their first grand, and they hadn't done anything wrong. But they have a different lifestyle, less money, less stuff for sure, than my sister. In a way though, that is what having strong boundaries looks like, isn't it? Like, you are not always wandering around trying to figure out what is the kind thing or whatever. I am still in contact with the family of the male who hurt our daughter. We're not calling on the phone or anything, but I like to see what they are up to on FB and so on. I want them to recover, too. It was an awful thing for all of us. It is an awful thing that their son or brother or uncle is where he is and that my daughter was hurt. Circles within circles, right? What I do is right for me. What my sister does is right, for her. But I don't like that exclusion thing she does to our family, and I don't have an ounce of compassion or pity or anything but rank hatred for her over what she did to my daughter when she was so out of it. But as I posted, our daughter took her right down to the short hairs on that one. My daughter can be kind and compassionate and so on? But she takes no s***. So, that's good, then. I am that way too, now that I think of it. I have no problem at all saying what I believe. Once I can figure out what it is. I think it's funny, too. I should go stalking my sister on FB. But that is the thing. I have no interest in stalking her. I never did. She was just someone in my life that I wanted to do well, and be happy. I did not need to know every detail. But then, I never once thought about going through her luggage, either. Oh, that's a good way to see it, SWOT. I will begin thinking those words where my sister is concerned. When you get right down to it, what you posted is the truth of the thing. No villain, and no hero role, either. Yes. I like that very much. Thank you. :O) Cedar [/QUOTE]
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