Siblings Shape Our Lives More than we Realize

Today we rewind and delve into the much overlooked topic of sibling relationships.  We speak with Fern Schumer Chapman author of the book Brothers, Sisters, Strangers.  Siblings are the longest relationship we will have in our lives - and our children's.  

Whether you're navigating your own sibling estrangement or watching it develop between your children, this conversation offers both validation and practical wisdom for one of life's most painful but least discussed family challenges.  It also makes you question: "Do you have a favorite child?"

Chapman shares her personal life story that led her to write this book and highlights a number of key points:

• Sibling relationships can last 80 years, making them our longest connections
• Estrangement often occurs during "perilous moments" like marriage, having children, or parental illness
• Parental favoritism significantly contributes to sibling rifts
• The "dignity model" approach to reconciliation requires genuine listening without challenging each other's stories
• Some relationships are too toxic to repair, especially with narcissism or mental illness involved
• Birth order affects sibling dynamics and relationships
• Estrangement ripples through families as relatives often align with one sibling
• Strong sibling connections are cornerstone of emotional health, according to Harvard's longest study of well-being

Huge thank you to Connie Gorant Fisher, our audio engineer.

Also remember to follow us on Facebook and Instagram. And once again, with just a donation of $5 you can help us keep going!  Visit our website at biteyourtonguepodcast.com and select SUPPORT US.  You can buy a "virtual" cup of coffee and support our work!

Chapters

• 0:00 The Ripple Effect of Sibling Rejection
• 3:43 Introduction & Sibling Estrangement Background
• 8:51 Risk Factors & Perilous Moments
• 18:10 Harry & William: A Royal Example
• 24:11 Rebuilding Broken Sibling Relationships
• 35:13 Journey Through Reconciliation
• 42:14 Mourning the Living: The Emotional Toll
• 49:34 Final Thoughts & Key Takeaways

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

Sibling rejection ripples into many parts of life and identity. It profoundly affects self-esteem, who you are, how you see yourself, your friendships, your social relationships, your well-being, your ability to trust and then, of course, many of your family relationships. As people then align themselves with one or the other sibling, Hello everyone, welcome to Bite your Tongue the podcast.

Speaker 3: 0:34

I'm Denise and I'm Kirsten, and we hope you will join us as we explore the ins and outs of building healthy relationships with our adult children Together we'll speak with experts, share heartfelt stories and get timely advice addressing topics that matter most to you. Get ready to dive deep and learn to build and nurture deep connections with our adult children and, of course, when, to bite our tongues. So let's get started.

Speaker 2: 1:02

Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of Bite your Tongue, the podcast. I'm Denise Gort and I'm here with my co-host, kirsten Heckendorf, and today we're talking about sibling relationships. I've heard so much about adult-child estrangement but I've never really heard people talking about sibling estrangement and since we planned this episode I've heard it a million times from people and I've said well, it's coming up and it's very foreign to me because my sister and I are so close. So this whole sibling family relationship stuff is very top of mind for me.

Speaker 3: 1:38

Yeah, I am very fortunate. My kids all get along for the most part and check in with one another, but I also know how difficult it is on them when one of them is struggling and they're either not able to help or they don't know what the right thing to say is and they may or may not want to tell us about it, I think it's a myriad of experiences for everyone and I think we're going to learn a lot about that from Fern today.

Speaker 2: 2:05

But before we start I have to do one quick shout out again biteyourtonguepodcastcom, please think about supporting us becoming a sustaining member. I'm not going to say much more about it. Everyone knows, just get on and give us a few bucks. So, kirsten, why don't you?

Speaker 3: 2:19

introduce Fern Absolutely. Thanks, Denise. We are thrilled today to have with us Fern Schumer Chapman. She has written several award-winning books, but her focus lately has been on brother-sister relationships. We're going to talk about her most recent book, Brothers, Sisters, Strangers Sibling Estrangement and the Road to Reconciliation, and the Sibling Estrangement Journal. She also writes a blog on psychologytodaycom called Brothers, Sisters, Strangers, and she co-hosts a podcast by the same name. Finally, Fern offers her expertise and personal experience by providing one-on-one coaching for those struggling with difficult sibling relationships. Welcome, Fern Schumer Chapman.

Speaker 1: 3:05

Thank you, it's great to be with you.

Speaker 2: 3:07

We're so glad to have you. Your interest in sibling relationships, it sounds like, began with your own personal experience with your brother. Why don't we start by you sharing a little bit about that with us? People may have similar journeys or something they can relate to to that may have similar journeys or something they can relate to, to that.

Speaker 1: 3:32

My brother and I didn't have much of a relationship for many decades, and we would see each other at funerals and weddings occasionally and really stay on opposite sides of the room. The reason for this was unclear to me. We were never particularly close as children, but then, when we started our own lives, we became increasingly distant and disconnected, like I said, very unclear as to why this happened, and it haunted me, as it does for many who are estranged. My brother had gotten into a very dark place and he did continue to have limited contact with my mother, and my mother left a voicemail one day on my answering machine and said that he's in a terrible place and I needed to intervene and do something because she didn't know what to do, and so that was the launch for this entire journey of reconnecting and ultimately reconciling.

Speaker 2: 4:31

Wow, what brought you to write the book?

Speaker 1: 4:34

Well, actually I had a conversation with my agent and she listened carefully and said oh my gosh. I suspect this is something that is much more common than most people recognize, and actually one of the things I've discovered is it's a kind of me too movement that the minute you start to admit that you cannot have a sustained relationship with a sibling, other people step in and say yeah, me too.

Speaker 3: 5:00

In your book you talk about your brother being complete opposites, which obviously is really common in siblings. You also say that the break between you did not really start until he was a newlywed, like you just said, when you guys were getting busy in your lives and everything. Do you know now what the trigger was?

Speaker 1: 5:18

Yes, I do, but I didn't at the time and it was particularly difficult because I didn't know.

Speaker 2: 5:26

You list trigger points in your book and I think in the outline I sent you I even pulled those out of your book and I'd like to go over those because it might help people who are dealing with things not recognizing what are the trigger points that usually begin to separate a strained sibling.

Speaker 1: 5:43

There are both risk factors and perilous moments. So a perilous moment is when the relationships change. So, for example, during adolescence, when one leaves for college, you have to renegotiate what the connection's going to be. Marriage is a big one, because a lot of times people choose spouses who do not promote relations in the original family, so that can be a perilous moment. The birth of a baby, as people then decide to invest in their own families, their nuclear families, and distance themselves a little bit from their original family. Divorce or illness is another one. Helping somebody through a divorce or sickness can be overwhelming and often create a lot of resentment because of the burden of it. And then, of course, the most perilous moment is parental illness, death and inheritance, and at that point siblings often engage in a last effort to establish who has the most power or love or family loyalty, and conflicts can arise over how to care for a parent and who's going to pay for the parent and, of course, how the estate will be settled and precious treasures, family treasures will be divided.

Speaker 3: 7:03

What strikes me about what you just said is that all of these things you just listed are life things. Right, who doesn't go through at least three or four of those things at some point? That's scary. It just makes it much more common.

Speaker 1: 7:20

Yeah, these relationships are fragile and they're competitive and they can be very difficult, and so sustaining them requires work. And these relationships are the longest in most people's lives they can last 80 years. There's a lot of interesting research about siblings which is largely unknown. Which is largely unknown. One thing you should recognize is that siblings have not been a topic of psychological research for decades, and the reason is that people like Freud didn't think it was very important. In fact, in recent years, siblings have been discovered to be extremely important, and in fact, there are some sibling therapists. I have a friend who wrote a book called Sibling Therapy, and she talks about this idea of sibling transference. In other words, you actually marry the person who is like your sibling.

Speaker 2: 8:18

I think that's very true, very interesting. I want to go back to the trigger points for one quick second and then you go off on your tangent and tell us everything you want to talk about Fern. But I really can get the point where parental illness, the will inheritance has caused a lot of angst for a lot of friends. Is there anything us, as parents of adult children, can help to have things set in place that may not cause that kind of sibling separation during that time?

Speaker 1: 8:49

There are a lot of things you can do. One of the big things is not have a favored child, because that creates more competition and pits one child against the other. The other thing that's really important is how you model communication skills so that children learn how to navigate differences, because if you don't learn those things in the family, then you're left to your own devices. If you don't have those skills, you cannot resolve the differences. It's wonderful I hear this often that people like you, denise, have wonderful relationships and they absolutely cannot understand how this could possibly happen, and all I have to say is what good fortune.

Speaker 1: 9:30

There are a lot of risk factors for this. One of the things I didn't understand when I did this book is that there were actually risk factors in social science that identify where things go off the rails. So, for example, family trauma is a big one. My brother and I are the son and daughter of a Holocaust refugee. That kind of trauma for our mother has intergenerational consequences and it's really important to recognize that family trauma is a huge factor in these estrangements.

Speaker 2: 10:08

What other risk factors are there?

Speaker 1: 10:11

Okay. So I was about to talk a little bit about Harry and William, and they're really a good example of why there is estrangement. So we were just talking about family trauma. Those boys had horrific family trauma and, as you know, they are estranged Now.

Speaker 1: 10:27

Obviously one does not necessarily follow the other and I could never assess all that, but I do think it's interesting that they have had that. But they also have a lot of other issues. So, for example, parental favoritism. The monarchy presents the ultimate in favoritism, as William will become king and Harry will always be relegated to a supporting role. So there's that there Poor communication skills. By the way, the monarchy is notoriously bad at resolving personal problems, and so the brothers probably never learned how to negotiate their differences.

Speaker 1: 11:04

Family values, judgments and choices. This is a really interesting one. When somebody marries someone outside the family identities, the family often doesn't tolerate that very well, and actually, if you think about it, harry married somebody way outside the family identity and the family has not tolerated that very well at all. Then you get into other issues like political differences and I've talked about that a lot recently Addiction and mental health issues. This is a very big one. Money is another big issue with one child gets more money than the other. And then another really interesting point is when there's a narcissist in the family, because who would do this? Somebody who lacks empathy, and oftentimes you get a narcissist, or you get somebody who might be autistic. Oftentimes you get a narcissist or you get somebody who might be autistic, and these factors can divide siblings.

Speaker 2: 12:10

How do you bring it back together? There could be a lot of listeners who are estranged from their siblings. In fact, I just got an email from a listener that said she said she raised two wonderful daughters, they grew up together and now they don't speak to each other, so your mother played a big role. I felt really bad for your mother when I was reading this and she would call you up for help and all this sort of thing. What kinds of roles can our generation play? Let's start with our own adult children and then let's go to our personal siblings. So with our adult children. If we see them becoming estranged from their siblings right now or, like this woman said, her daughters don't talk at all what role can we play? Anything?

Speaker 1: 12:54

I don't think there's a lot you can do. I hate to say it. My mother put a lot of pressure on both of us and it just turned into more resentment towards her. And then she would make choices, as you know, to go to my brother's house for a holiday and I wouldn't be invited and I would resent that it's a no win. And she would argued as you know from the book. She said well, you know, I don't want to lose contact with my grandchildren. I'll take the crumbs I get, so you can see how this builds a lot of resentment.

Speaker 2: 13:26

Yeah, I listened to this and when I read it I want to say, if that happened, I guess maybe I'm just a real communicator. If that happened, I'd say I'd call my brother and I'd say listen, mom's going to your house for Christmas. We don't even have to eat, but we all want to be together. Can I come over just to give Mom a hug and say Merry Christmas or Happy Hanukkah, whatever it was? I feel like I don't know that I could let any of that go.

Speaker 1: 13:49

What if your sister-in-law doesn't want you there and makes you feel like you are an unwelcome?

Speaker 2: 13:56

visitor. Yeah, boy, that's okay. Now you're adding another level to it and there's no communicating with your brother. Why doesn't Sally like me?

Speaker 1: 14:05

No, I mean, maybe she's made that decision and she's telling him that it's not that I don't like them, they don't like me. How do you argue with these narratives, so you?

Speaker 2: 14:18

ended up coming together with your brother. Can you take us through the journey?

Speaker 1: 14:23

Yeah, I should say a couple of things before I do those. Some relationships are simply too toxic to repair. Some have violence, some have abuse, and in those cases you have to protect yourself If you decide that you do want to repair the relationship, you have to really sit down and ask yourself some hard questions Like why is this relationship important to me, and not to my family, but just to me?

Speaker 1: 14:49

Does my family member want to resume the relationship? You can have all the goodwill in the world, but if your partner doesn't have any desire to reconnect, it's not going to go anywhere.

Speaker 2: 15:00

You mean your sibling partner, not your partner partner. Sorry, your sibling, okay.

Speaker 1: 15:04

Can I set aside the anger and pain and resentment that led to the break in the first place and change our pattern of relating? Do I want to resume the relationship if I discover that neither of us has changed? Do I have the time and energy and emotional resilience and support of other loved ones to reconcile and rebuild the relationship? And finally, am I gonna compromise too much of myself if I try to sustain the relationship with this sibling? So those are sort of the starting point for all of this.

Speaker 1: 15:36

If you decide you're going to go forward with it, you have to sit down together, face to face, and, by the way, this particular model is based on what's called the dignity model and it's used with parties in a genocide warring parties in a genocide. You have to listen without interrupting and without challenging each other's stories. The one goal is to seek understanding. Experts agree that reconciliation is almost impossible without genuine listening. Reconciliation is almost impossible without genuine listening. You have to acknowledge with empathy the other person's hurt, anger or alienation, give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they have sincere, trustworthy intentions. And when each party accepts both parties' experiences, then neither one feels devalued. You have to stress and act on your willingness and desire and hope to create a bond and finally, and this is the hardest part, you have to let go of the anger.

Speaker 2: 16:35

It's not that much different than we've talked to people on a strange relationship with their children, but it's usually the adult that has to do the things that you just said Listen, not criticize. Accept what they've done wrong or even if they don't think they have, don't argue it if you want to create the bond again. But you wonder how long that bond's going to last, because everyone goes back to being who they were.

Speaker 1: 16:59

Yeah, a lot of these relationships lapse back into estrangement.

Speaker 2: 17:04

Before you tell us your journey, I want to go back to the favorite child. Do you think everyone has a favorite child? What creates that whole idea of a favorite child number one, and does birth order have anything to do with it?

Speaker 1: 17:15

Well, the studies show that most mothers do have a favorite child. I don't know whether birth order has anything to do with it or not, but it definitely gets communicated, and a lot of times it's because somebody is more like you or you see yourself in one of your children.

Speaker 2: 17:33

Yeah, I think I've had favorite children, but they change. You know what I mean. There's times I like one better than the other and I'm pretty honest with them. You know, right now you're not on the top of my list.

Speaker 3: 17:42

Right, that's exactly what I say.

Speaker 1: 17:47

Yeah, yeah, I think the key is actually not to show any favoritism and try to acknowledge the uniqueness of every child.

Speaker 2: 17:52

What are ways you show favoritism and don't show favoritism? What you just said was that you're not on the top of my list, yeah, but I'm saying that sort of tongue in cheek a little bit. But how a parent show favoritism like giving one child a down payment for the house and not giving the other child or things like that.

Speaker 1: 18:12

Yeah, money's a very big issue in families. It's a very much a statement of love, favoring one child over the other in a will, giving them precious treasures, slipping them things without the other kid knowing.

Speaker 3: 18:26

Well, these are all the things to avoid.

Speaker 2: 18:28

Yeah, all right, let's go to your journey, unless there's more backdrop you want us to hear about.

Speaker 1: 18:33

You know, I would like to say a couple of quick things in general. So people think, well, you don't talk to your brother, that's too bad, but it's not the worst thing in the world, and actually I would argue it's so much more than not just talking to my brother. Sibling rejection ripples into many parts of life and identity. It profoundly affects self-esteem, who you are, how you see yourself, your friendships, your social relationships, your well-being, your ability to trust and then, of course, many of your family relationships as people then align themselves with one or the other sibling. So I think that's a really important point to recognize that we're not just talking about not talking to one sibling. We're talking about how this affects the well-being of an individual and what happens is it's a form of grief and in many ways I call it mourning the living, because you walk around ruminating about this one person who is a part of your shared history and wants nothing to do with you. And it's not like death which is final. There's somebody walking the earth who you have an expectation you'll have a relationship with that's lifelong, and they want nothing to do with you. So it's a profound rejection.

Speaker 1: 19:54

Brothers and sisters are our first playmates and they instill in each of us certain social qualities, so they include tolerance and generosity and loyalty. It's kind of a blueprint for your friendships and your relationships with colleagues and lovers. And that's where that sibling transference comes in that we were talking about earlier. There's a lot of research that shows that a strong sibling connection is a cornerstone of emotional health. The longest study of well-being, which was done by the Harvard Study of Adult Development it's been underway since 1938, found that a close sibling relationship during the college years provided a reliable indicator for emotional health later in years. There are a lot of other studies that show that adolescents who perceived that their siblings validated them reported higher levels of self-esteem. They had better academic performances, they had improved chances of being well-adjusted as they get older, less loneliness, lower levels of depression and a greater satisfaction later in life. And this is all the various studies that have been done in the last couple of decades.

Speaker 2: 21:08

Boy, you'd never think that sibling relationships place that much into your life. But as you say that I get it, I mean that is a huge rejection. So you're evaluating yourself too. What is wrong with me that my brother or sister wants nothing to do with me? I could go into a very deep hole over something like that, and it could even be a cousin too that you were very close to, and suddenly they want nothing to do with you. And then I hear you say it's the whole family. So maybe some holidays Aunt Sally invites everybody else but you, because brother and his wife or sister and her husband are going, so you're completely left out. Then Aunt Betty invites you, so the whole family becomes somewhat estranged. It's very fractured. Fractured is the word. Right, Right, Okay.

Speaker 3: 21:53

Well, and then our children? Right, I mean, it's just as simple as pulling it back to our children. Our adult children then don't have those relationships with their cousins and it hasn't been modeled for them. It's very complicated.

Speaker 1: 22:11

It's very complicated and you remind me of a story that I included in the book, where this woman told me that her son was on a train in New York City and he took his phone and took a photograph of the guy he was sitting next to on the train and, he said, sent it to his mom. He said is this uncle Mike? Of course this was his father's brother, but they hadn't had any contact in 20 years. You're absolutely right that this affects generations to come and it affects your knowledge of medical issues and it affects family stories. So it's really really deep together.

Speaker 2: 22:55

Social media this must make it even worse, because then on a holiday, everyone else is having a great time and every sibling's in matching pajamas, and you weren't invited to the party.

Speaker 1: 23:13

That's exactly right. And actually another really hard holiday for strange siblings is National Siblings Day, because on social media everybody puts up their-.

Speaker 2: 23:24

Oh puts a picture of their brother or sister. That's right. Social media Everybody puts up their oh puts a picture of their brother or sister. That's right.

Speaker 1: 23:27

And I actually was just invited to National Siblings event in New York to celebrate the day and I'm like are you sure you want me? Because I'm actually the opposite, I've had the estrangement for so many decades. And she said, no, we want you to speak because we want to understand these relationships better.

Speaker 2: 23:48

That makes sense. There is a point in your book where you talk about what is estrangement.

Speaker 1: 23:52

A friend of mine wrote me a letter after he saw that I was soliciting respondents to my survey and he said I see my brother at weddings and funerals. Am I estranged? Funerals Am I estranged? And if you go by the typical definition, yeah, it's a process where at least one family member voluntarily or intentionally distances themselves from another family member because of an ongoing perceived negative relationship.

Speaker 3: 24:23

Perceived is the key word there. I've certainly had experiences with my siblings where my kids were quite a bit older than my sisters, and then I have a brother whose kids are way older than my kids and during those really busy, crazy times we really didn't speak as often. We've continued to speak throughout, but there were those gaps in time where it didn't. I didn't even think about it. To be perfectly honest, I don't feel guilty about it, but what I do like is that when the moments arrived, we were all together as if we hadn't skipped a beat, almost like your old best friend like your old best friend.

Speaker 1: 25:09

Well, imagine if you have a conflicted relationship with those siblings and then you have to negotiate care for your elderly parent, the inheritance and settling of the will and dividing the precious family treasures. Everything reemerges.

Speaker 2: 25:21

I tell you what my mother did, and I still think it's the smartest thing, and I've told my kids the same thing what my mother did, and I still think it's the smartest thing, and I've told my kids the same thing. She said put two numbers. There were only two of us. Each of you pick a number. Whoever's first pick something first. Then it goes back and forth One, two, one, two. That's a solution.

Speaker 1: 25:38

I mean, I think that's a fine solution. It's just all the issues. It doesn't always work. Yeah, all the issues that were divided, you reemerge.

Speaker 2: 25:49

I did have in here the toll it takes. I think. One person said estrangement is like a bad tooth that's always pulsating with pain, and someone else said sibling estrangement is a wound that never heals. After 25 years of no contact with my sister, I'm still waiting for the hurting to stop. Death is final explains one. Maybe we've talked about this. But the toll it takes on you Is there anything else you want to add to that? Because I don't think all listeners will understand it unless they hear it from you.

Speaker 1: 26:19

Yeah, I actually can quote a study which I think illustrates the point Exclusion can cause pain that cuts deeper and lasts longer than a physical injury, according to Dr Kipling William and he's a distinguished professor of psychological sciences at Purdue and he's noted for his unique studies on ostracism he says that when someone's shunned, even by a stranger, even if only briefly, he has found that he or she experiences a strong harmful reaction activating the same areas of the brain that register physical pain.

Speaker 2: 26:59

Wow, We've really got to get to helping people navigate back to connection if they want it. Like you set up all the scenarios when they shouldn't, but possibly someone sitting here saying I really would love to get in touch with my sister again. We were so close at one time. What's going on here? What are the steps someone should take, or what did you do? That's why I was wanting to hear your story. Maybe it would be helpful, because yours took several steps.

Speaker 1: 27:24

It took a year to rebuild the relationship in the wake of that kind of betrayal and I didn't feel like I could trust him, and so much of the memoir portion of the book is portraying this feeling that. Is he trustworthy? Am I safe to get involved with him again? Is he trustworthy, am I safe to get involved with him again After all these years where he wanted nothing to do with me? I talked a little bit about rumination earlier, but I would wake up every day and go what did I do? How can I fix this? Why did this happen?

Speaker 1: 27:58

A lot of self-blame, you would ask me if I knew the reason. And the irony of my story is that it was never about me. He was an alcoholic, he was drinking, his life was blurry and blotted out. He wasn't even aware sometimes of what he was doing and how it was affecting anyone else. And so all these years of blaming myself and it had nothing to do with me. The other piece of it as to why we were estranged is that in some ways, I reminded him of my father and he had a very difficult relationship with our father. I can't control that. That had nothing to do with me either. It wasn't something I did.

Speaker 3: 28:41

How did that make you feel when you realized that? I think that would be so freeing in a lot of ways.

Speaker 1: 28:47

It's freeing and trapping at the same time. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 28:52

How about your kids when they were growing up? I saw something recently where a little kid said why aren't we in touch with grandma? So would your kids say uncle so-and-so from dad's family's over here? Where's uncle John or whatever? And how did you explain that to them?

Speaker 1: 29:07

It's not easy. I mean, what do you say to children? They don't understand it. I actually had this conversation with my granddaughter recently, because it's not so. I might have repaired my relationship with my brother, but my kids have no relationship with him because they weren't raised with him. And so my granddaughter said you have a brother, and I said yes, and she said how come I've never met him? Well, that's complicated. And does your granddaughter have a sibling? She does. She's only five. She has a little three-year-old sister, but this is all very strange to her.

Speaker 2: 29:39

That's what I was going to say, because she's being brought up with this impression that this is the most important person in my life, and so now she's hearing that her adult grandmother has a brother that she's in no contact with.

Speaker 3: 29:52

Where are you now in this journey, because I'm guessing that it's been really continuous.

Speaker 1: 29:59

It has been continuous but, I have to say, not without hitches. Oh, I'm sure there have been a lot of arguments and we have worked through most of them. These relationships wax and wane, just like any other, but it's been valuable and cherished, because I only have one brother and we have had the opportunity to share our histories and for years, decades, I felt like I had nobody to corroborate my memories.

Speaker 2: 30:31

Well, let me just tell you my sister and I, we both grew up in a different house.

Speaker 3: 30:36

My kids will say the same thing.

Speaker 1: 30:38

Yeah, I have found that to be true in our reconciliation. His memories are very different from mine.

Speaker 2: 30:44

I think that's pretty common yeah, estranged or not estranged, yeah it took a year and we did a lot of activities together.

Speaker 1: 30:52

We had a lot of conversations and that's what I've portrayed in the book how we actually rebuilt this relationship in the wake of this. But the book also captures other voices and other people's stories, and then also the social science behind estrangement which, like I said, when I started all this I didn't even realize there was social science behind estrangement.

Speaker 2: 31:16

Did you involve your brother in your family? Would he ever come once you started chatting? Would he come to a family dinner? Did he meet your children, your husband?

Speaker 1: 31:25

Yeah, we had some connection but nothing ever really took in the way that I would have hoped. The cousins never grafted and it was just too late To build these relationships. There's a window in childhood. If you miss that window, it's very hard to reconnect or rebuild it.

Speaker 2: 31:45

How about geographical distance? Are there any studies on estrangement? Is it less often when the siblings live in the same town, or more often?

Speaker 1: 31:53

I don't know that there's any specific research on that, but what there is is that people sometimes use physical distance to gain the separation they need in the family. There are lots of different types of estrangements. You can have a physical distance, you can have a limited relationship where you don't really share your emotional experiences, or you can have a complete no contact and, like I said earlier, a lot of people go no contact because they have to protect themselves All right.

Speaker 2: 32:26

I think we need to hear your steps through this year and anything that could be helpful to our listeners. If they're in a situation where they do want to reconnect and it's safe to reconnect, what steps would you advise people to take?

Speaker 1: 32:38

I went through the model the sit down together face to face.

Speaker 2: 32:42

But how do you reach out?

Speaker 1: 32:50

I remember at one point I thought he called you for lunch. The lunch was a flop. And then my mother left that voicemail and begged me to intervene. I called him, discharging what I thought was my obligation and hoping he'd never call me back. Just a few minutes later he did. He needed a lot of help and treatment and it's very hard to abandon a brother or sister when they're down like that.

Speaker 2: 33:12

Okay. So when you make this phone call maybe now it's a text. What would be the way to approach that in an initial phone call? Hi John, it's been a long time. I'd love to reconnect if you're interested. Or do you say that I maybe have done some things, but I apologize for anything I've done that's been hurtful to you and I would love to start over, or how would you approach that?

Speaker 1: 33:32

I think there are a lot of ways to do it and it does depend on what caused the divide. One possibility and my brother and I did do this is to work with a counselor and see if you can have somebody mediate some of the differences. That helps someone. There has to be goodwill on both sides. There has to be the desire on both sides. I think what I would do if I were in this situation is to say that I do have the desire, do you?

Speaker 2: 34:00

Right, and then they say, no, you have to move on. Or let me know if you ever do, I'm open to reuniting.

Speaker 3: 34:06

I miss you.

Speaker 2: 34:07

I love you, I miss you. Yeah, do you think you ever would have done it without your mother's prodding? No, I was done. I had been hurt too much and you find that across the board. Can you share any other stories?

Speaker 1: 34:30

Because you have a lot of stories in your book that might be helpful or that's similar to people could relate to. Actually, since the book, I've been contacted by many people who are estranged and looking for coaching. So I have ended up in this very unique position of having done so much research and having this lived experience that I can guide a little bit through these difficult relationships. Now, again, you have to assess what you want to do, because some of them are way too toxic, and one thing we haven't talked enough about is that when you have somebody who's either mentally ill or narcissistic in the family, you are pretty hamstrung as far as what you can do, because there are certain patterns of behavior that are not conducive to healthy relationships.

Speaker 2: 35:15

How do you identify narcissism? Because everyone has a different definition, it seems to me. So how do you identify it?

Speaker 1: 35:22

There are certainly many red flags, and my favorite person is Dr Romney, who has a whole series on YouTube on narcissism. But there are several different types of narcissists and sometimes it's not so evident that somebody is narcissistic. But even if they're not narcissistic, if they're completely self-absorbed, but even if they're not narcissistic if they're completely self-absorbed.

Speaker 2: 35:49

Yeah, I mean that I get self-absorbed, but I know the word narcissism and narcissist are used a lot in a lot of different situations and I never can figure out is it pompousness, is it egotism or is it narcissism?

Speaker 1: 35:58

Right or a lack of empathy, but I think what I'm talking about here is if the relationship is transactional, which is very narcissistic, you're going to have a very difficult time getting your needs met in it and oftentimes I would be reluctant to say that somebody is specifically narcissistic. But certainly when you see these patterns of self-absorption and transactional behavior and arrogance and lack of empathy, I think you're probably looking at some of that.

Speaker 2: 36:28

All this seems so hard to me because you could be the one that's the narcissist and you don't even know it.

Speaker 1: 36:33

Yeah, these relationships are very complicated and need to discuss our own narrative.

Speaker 3: 36:37

Well, and you brought up the mental illness, but also the alcoholism, drug abuse, any of those scenarios, other trauma that you're unaware?

Speaker 2: 36:47

of. We had a conversation with Carl Pillemer, who wrote a book on estrangement, and he said he interviewed so many people that were on their deathbed and no one said I wanted more money, I wish I had a better job, I wish I had a bigger house. Everyone wished they would have reconciled with someone that they were estranged from. So that impact just carries to your deathbed, I guess.

Speaker 1: 37:11

Right and there's a momentum to these things and it's very hard to change the trajectory.

Speaker 2: 37:19

Do you have any advice on how people help themselves through it? You can't have this sore tooth pulsating with pain your whole life. Is there any self-care that you advise that can help someone through this?

Speaker 1: 37:33

I think the big piece is you don't let your sibling define who you are and the estrangement define who you are. Define who you are. You have to know yourself and surround yourself with chosen family who value you and respect you, and make those people replacements for what you've lost. That makes sense. It is a really, really painful, difficult road and nobody wants to talk about it. It's terribly stigmatized. As I was saying, it's like a Me Too movement. People feel shame.

Speaker 2: 38:09

It's the same with child and adult child estrangement. No one wants to say I'm estranged from my child because maybe they're afraid it reflects on them. What's wrong with you that you don't get along with your brother? What's wrong with you that you don't get along with your kid?

Speaker 1: 38:28

Right. I always say that if I told you that I'm divorced, you probably wouldn't blink. If I say I can't get along with my mother, you'd probably roll your eyes in agreement. But when I say I can't get along with my brother, it calls a lot of things into question. What kind of companion would you be? Are you that kind of thing?

Speaker 2: 38:44

okay, so we're going to wrap up, but we always ask our guests to leave us with two or three takeaways that you want to really make sure our listeners take away from this episode. What would those be?

Speaker 1: 38:55

the idea that estrangement involves mourning the living and that it ripples through many parts of life and identity. So that's number one, that siblings are far more important in terms of well-being than most of us recognize. The third one is that there is actually social science and research in this field of estrangement and that there are risk factors and perilous turning points.

Speaker 2: 39:27

And I'm going to add one more that you said, because I think it relates to our listeners don't have a favorite child.

Speaker 1: 39:34

Yeah, children pick up slights everywhere, so you have to be as extra sensitive. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 39:41

Well, thank you so much for joining us. This was really very enlightening. I think, yeah, well, thank you so much for joining us. This was really very enlightening. I think none of us really we've talked about adult child and parent estrangement, but the impact of the sibling estrangement is pretty impactful to listen to.

Speaker 1: 39:55

Thank you and thanks for giving it attention. I think the only way to reduce the stigma is for more people to become aware and admit to it.

Speaker 3: 40:03

Yeah, that the truth is. So many of these issues, okay.

Speaker 2: 40:07

So thank you so much. Thank you. Well, that's a wrap. Thank you so much to Fern. That was interesting to me, not as different, as we've said, as estrangement from an adult child, but I think what I gained most of it out of it. As parents of adult children, we need to be very careful how we treat each of them equally. Carl Pillemer said they did a research study and 65 or 70% of parents have favored children. So you're setting the stage for some estrangement for your kids in the future.

Speaker 3: 40:42

So hold on to that Right, right, yeah, no, I think we definitely need to be more careful, setting the stage for some estrangement for your kids in the future. So hold on to that. Right, right, yeah. No, I think we definitely need to be more careful. That was a great episode.

Speaker 2: 40:50

Thanks so much to everyone once again for listening. Again, connie Gorn-Fisher, our audio engineer, three cheers for you. Remember to go to our website, biteyourtonguepodcastcom. As little as $5 will keep us going. But even more importantly, we really want your ideas and thoughts. What topics do you want us to cover? We need to open the doors to some new ideas. Email us biteyourtonguepodcastcom On our website. Now you can actually give us a voicemail. Just send us a voicemail. Talk to us about what's going on and we'll see what we can do to explore it. Everything's anonymous. Just write to us or talk to us from our website. Have a great day and remember.

Speaker 3: 41:31

Sometimes you just have to bite your tongue. Thank, you.