Chapter 7: March 2013

The next instalment in my meditation memoir, focused on how meditation can assist with depression. This chapter is about my reunion with my sister Kitty after a seven-year estrangement.

Transcript

CHAPTER VII.

MARCH 2013.

As went February,

So went much of March.

Ira and I continued to argue.

I continued to see Victoria without Ira.

I got to work a little intimidated,

But not unhappily so,

Deciphering the coechin sweater pattern.

Increasingly I skipped reading the newspaper and listening to NPR,

An experiment and less exposure to the constant bad news that bombards us around the clock.

Instead I immersed myself in music and in silence,

Realizing rather quickly that this media purge helped decrease my constant low-level anxiety and feel more balanced mentally.

And yes,

I continued to sit every day on my meditation cushion and breathe in and breathe out,

Aiming for 21 minutes per sit.

My outlook,

Which had already brightened some in February,

Grew incrementally sunnier.

What most elevated my mood in March,

What truly caused my spirits to soar,

Was a visit from my big sister Kitty.

I'd left home on the cusp of nineteen and in the three decades since,

My visits back to Jersey had been rare because whenever I returned,

The pain of my past rained down on me.

Kitty had never been to see me,

So this was a very big deal,

Made bigger still,

Because we spent 2004 through 2011 completely estranged,

Not speaking at all except for a few brief civil words exchanged at our father's funeral in 2008.

The reasons for our estrangement were both complicated and universal.

Sibling rivalry,

More than a little jealousy,

And conflicting beliefs regarding religion.

She once insisted I needed Jesus in my life,

And I adamantly disagreed.

And our father,

I claimed rampant abuse,

And she and the others denied it.

By 2004 I'd had enough.

I felt ostracized by them all,

Angry and frustrated at their collective denial over our traumatic childhood,

Which clearly had left each of us damaged in our own ways,

And all of us,

I thought,

Prime candidates for some study on extreme anxiety.

On my 47th birthday I received a text.

Happy birthday,

I'm enjoying your latest quilt book.

I knew from the area code it was likely one of my siblings,

But they weren't programmed into my phone,

So I wasn't sure which one.

Taking an educated guess,

Kitty was the family quilter,

I texted back.

Kitty?

When she confirmed I was right,

My heart sank.

My seven-year silence had transitioned over the years from hostile to a sad acceptance.

I no longer bore my siblings ill will,

Just kept my distance in the interest of self-preservation.

But here is the thing about my black sheep status.

I missed my family.

Or,

More accurately,

I missed what I wished my family had been.

I was,

By blood,

Part of this living,

Breathing mass of people cut from the very same fabric.

People who,

Regardless of where we stood on opinions about how we were raised,

Knew me before anyone else knew me.

They might not know or understand who I'd become,

And I had been gone from them far longer than I'd been with them.

But still,

We were from this home planet,

Unique to us,

And so being out of touch with them left a lifelong gaping hole in my heart.

Therapy helped me better understand my conflicting feelings.

Desperate to distance myself but forever lamenting the loss.

I had come to see that,

Even if at the outset and on the surface,

My various relationships with men over the years looked different from one another.

At the core,

Each resembled the family of Arge and I had left.

Time and again I put myself in situations where ultimately not only would I have difficulties with my partner,

But also there would be some major falling out with his family,

And I would be pushed out or flee.

This was true of my last marriage.

It was true of my relationship with Henry's father,

Big Red,

To whom I'd never been married.

And now it was true of Ira and his family,

Their hostility toward me mounting.

Whether I was intuiting at the start of relationships,

Ah-ha,

Here is a family that will soon hate me,

Or becoming antagonistic to recreate my past,

I wasn't sure.

Probably elements of both were at work.

Whatever the case,

I'd just keep repeating this pattern,

Thinking with each new relationship,

Maybe this will be the family that accepts me,

Only to eventually be cast out of yet another group.

When Kitty reached out with that text,

I had no immediate desire to revisit what had driven us apart.

I was just excited to hear from her.

In a moment of giddy recklessness,

I texted back,

Thanking her and inviting her to an upcoming speaking gig I had in New York.

She agreed.

When the time came to give my speech,

I flew into Philly,

The airport closest to most of my family.

Kitty picked me up.

I had been nervous in the weeks leading up to this meeting,

Our first since our father's funeral.

I wondered if we would totally gloss over the seven-year silence,

Or address it.

I figured either option would bring its own level of discomfort.

I was relieved and surprised to the point of shock then,

When on the drive home,

She pulled over and asked me to tell her my story and describe my suffering,

So she could truly listen and try to understand.

We sat in the bitter cold and filled that car with a gush of words,

A long overdue yet totally unexpected conversation about family dynamic and our differing take on things.

She did not try to correct me.

In fact,

We found some common ground.

I will never forget how utterly transformative it felt to be listened to,

To explain my perspective without whipping myself up into the usual state of defensiveness I felt around all of my siblings.

I caught the bus up to New York the next day,

And she and another sister followed on a later train.

To have two of my siblings witness me speaking in public,

And to see how my hosts had rolled out the red carpet for me was a moment of pride,

Not as in,

Look at how fabulous I am,

More like,

Isn't it awesome?

Because even if we didn't see eye to eye on many of our childhood memories,

We definitely had very similar recollections about all the things we did not have growing up,

And we certainly did not have events like this to attend.

On that trip to the East Coast,

Kitty confessed something she'd mentioned in passing before,

But now took the time to elaborate upon.

She admitted that she had been jealous of me from the moment I was born.

By then she'd been the baby of the family for nearly four years.

My arrival meant less attention for her.

She remembered sneaking into my room and trying to spank me.

She said I totally stole her thunder,

And so she rejected me in turn.

She apologized and speculated that the sense of rejection that haunted me likely began with her.

I'm not sure I believed the theory that her feelings of rivalry were at the root of my insecurities.

That she was willing to help me think through my pain,

Though,

Moved me deeply.

As it turned out,

I did not so much need her to agree with me,

I just wanted to be heard.

Here I was,

Nearly five decades on the planet,

And at long last I was forging a true relationship with my sister.

I might as well have been five years old and being offered a chance to play a board game with her.

Being accepted,

Admired,

Loved by this person whose acceptance,

Admiration,

And love seemed to have eluded me most of my life felt astonishingly good.

To be fair,

It's not like Kitty spent her life actively hating me.

There were many times she went out of her way to try to understand my world.

Knowing I wanted to be a writer,

She got me my first copy of the Writer's Guide to the Market when I was a teenager,

Inscribing it with an encouraging message.

Before our estrangement,

I will call her from time to time,

Me the wanderer always moving to someplace new,

Her back in Jersey just miles from our childhood home,

And tell her my most outrageous stories.

Often though,

I saved contact for when I was deep in a devastating depression.

I understand now this gave her the false impression that I was perpetually depressed,

As the distressed cause easily outnumbered the happy ones.

Now we were moving beyond that.

Her trip to Austin came two years after our New York adventure.

I was so excited to show her my world and to introduce her to my friends,

This is my big sister,

That I created an exhausting itinerary.

But Kitty's excitement matched my own,

And our co-energy was boundless.

For the brief three days she was in town,

I ran her ragged.

We wolfed down tacos the size of our heads,

Visited a goat farm,

Attended Honk,

A crazy marching band festival,

And dashed from one friend's house to the next.

I already knew how abundant and hilarious my life was,

But having my sister bear witness thrilled me.

I wasted no time lamenting all the years we had lost to our differences,

And instead rejoiced that we had managed to connect at all.

The hole inside of me,

That gaping space I imagined could never be filled because it represented the family to which I both did and did not belong,

Did not close entirely when Kitty and I figured out a friendship.

Certainly though,

It shrunk exponentially.

There was a side note to our visit,

Something that took on much greater meaning months after the fact.

At the time it just seemed like a very sad story hard to digest.

Kitty informed me that my old high school friend Steve,

With whom I'd lost touch,

Had died three years earlier,

At 45,

After suffering horribly with ALS.

I knew Steve had been married and I found his wife Gail easily enough on Facebook.

I sent her a brief message expressing my sadness and she wrote back almost immediately.

We swapped some notes about Steve and Gail said what she remembered most about me was the little cow tattoo on my right arm.

Cow,

She explained,

Had played a very important role in her life with Steve,

And she took my out of the blue note and the memory of my little cow as signs,

The universe's way of saying we needed to get together.

The next thing I knew,

She registered for a weekend writing retreat I was hosting in July.

No one had ever traveled so far to join one of my classes.

I was pleased but also nervous,

Hoping she would not be disappointed after investing so much time and money to see me.

Reviews

Very much appreciated. I put “estrangement” in the search bar and your reading came up. It really helped.

Greatly enjoyed!

Thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re a wonderful writer and your story of handling depression with meditation sad, Joyful and inspiring.

Listened all podcasts. I recognize so much in your story. Thank you for sharing! 🙏💜

Thank you for your story. Very interesting and informative.

Thank you for so bravely sharing your story. I just binge listed to all the chapters available. It's a shame that this is all there is on here but I will seek out your book. I'm hooked!

I would also love more!

This resonated with me. I have a family to which i both belong and do not belong as well. I hope more is uploaded soon. I like listening to this teacher and story.

Really loving this story!!! I see that no more of it has been uploaded. Hopefully I’ll be able to find it or more will be uploaded eventually. Very enjoyable! Thank you! 🌺🙏🌺

Looking forward to your next chapter!

I've loved every chapter of this book. I will be investing in the complete version. Thank you for sharing your shit. Namaste 🙇‍♀️

Oh no! What comes after this?
Please post soon!!!!
Your story is fascinating and helpful. Kindred spirits, here

I'm enjoying your story so much.

Been waiting impatiently for the next chapter! Plans to post?

So happy for you and your sister!!!