Losing a child is every parent’s nightmare, and under different circumstances, it would be the moment for sisters to lean on one another.
But what happens when that sisterly bond has already been fractured beyond repair? She’s being pressured to comfort the same sister who mocked her infertility and made her suffering feel like a competition, and she has no interest in playing nice.
This 31-year-old woman’s 33-year-old sister received heartbreaking news ten weeks ago. Her sister was told she still had to deliver her baby girl, even though her heart had stopped beating when she turned 21 weeks old.
Now, she has pretty much ignored her sister’s existence for the last several years. She sees her sister two times a year, if that, and she has her sister blocked on social media as well as on her phone.
Her entire family is aware of how she feels about her sister, but regardless, they want her to tell her sister how sorry she is about her stillborn daughter.
Obviously, she hasn’t said anything to her sister, but her loved ones are pushing her and feel this is the perfect reason to bring her and her sister back together.
“My parents are the most vocal about how heartless it is to not come together after a huge loss like this. But I don’t think our past issues can be washed away by her loss. Her going through this does not change everything that’s happened for me,” she explained.
The fact is, she and her sister got along well as children, but as they got older, that all changed. While they didn’t argue that much, they basically stayed away from one another.
As they hit their teen years, her sister got it in her head that she was the golden child in the eyes of their grandparents, so that meant she shouldn’t be allowed to find happiness.
Sign up for Chip Chick’s newsletter and get stories like this delivered to your inbox.
Then, when she started dating her husband in high school, her sister was envious of her newfound romance and the fact that she and her husband shared an unshakable bond.
But the worst thing her sister did happened when she started a family.
“She taunted my inability to conceive naturally. She rubbed two of her previous pregnancies in my face and her ‘super fertility.’ She even used her babies to taunt me, and not all of it was just something hurtful to me, but to them,” she added.
“Like when she had her second, she told me she didn’t even want her kids, but she had them because she knew it hurt me. For me, that was the final straw, and this is when I went low contact.”
“But I felt bad for her kids, too, because whether she meant it or not, if they had been older, that would have been horrific to hear their mom say. She showed no remorse for saying it either. And all future interactions were her very much gloating about her ability to have kids.”
Their other family members noticed her sister’s cruelty and confronted her about it, but that didn’t do any good. She has many reasons not to want to forgive her sister or show her sympathy in her time of need.
She doesn’t have it in there to be a support system for her sister after everything that has been said and done, and that’s why she’s wondering if that makes her a jerk.
Family often tries to guilt people into doing the right thing, but that doesn’t mean blind forgiveness. She doesn’t owe her sister closeness just because tragedy struck, and I think she is doing what’s best for her in staying away from her sister, even if her loved ones can’t understand it.
What do you think?
You can read the original post below.
By Bre Avery Zacharski
Hi, I'm Bre, Chip Chick's CEO! I have a degree in Textile/Surface Design from The Fashion Institute of Technology, and... More about Bre Avery Zacharski
