So this is how I win my sister’s love
How two sisters reconnected after a childhood with narcissistic abuse.
Without looking back at my mother, I exited the dining room and made a beeline for my sister.
“Go on,” my mom had said softly with a smirk I barely caught. “Give it a shot, she’ll love it.” I admit I couldn’t remember her exact words, but I remember the sentiment. Razz my sister a little, tease her like friends do, and it’ll endear her to me.
What I didn’t realize was how that was the last thing my sister needed.
My mom was constantly “razzing” my sister when she thought no one was looking. Spoiler alert, it was noticed, but what can you do when a mother does that to little children?
Apparently, you let them know you “see” them as they edge closer to their 40th birthday, and you always knew. But you watched and waited from a distance while they grew to adults before going to a quiet corner during a series of family gatherings with other family members who witnessed the same occurrences.
My mother was constantly needling, manipulating, goading, and straight-up bullying my sister into hysterics. Several times a week, my mother would “be in a mood.” I took copious mental notes as she riled my sister up; it was then a mad dash to the landline phone to call my father to complain.
“I just don’t know what’s wrong with her,” my mom would say if she got to the phone first, my sister often sobbing loudly in the background.
If my sister got to the phone first…I honestly don’t remember. My mom always won this little game, and I never put two and two together that what I was doing was exactly what my mom was doing.
In other words, the last thing my sister needed was to be teased.
But my mother would never steer me wrong. So I kept trying. I must be doing it wrong. I should try harder to get my sister’s attention. This is definitely how I get my sister’s attention; my mother repeatedly confirmed it.
“I just don’t know what to do, they’re always fighting,” my mother would complain to anyone who would listen.
“You only have one sister; she’s the only sister you’ve got,” my mother would admonish me.
“Ignore her,” my mother said dismissively to my sister, waiting until my sister walked away before encouraging me to follow her.
The grief and rejection I felt from the loss of my sister never left me, nor did I forget my mom’s admonishing words. Yet I do recall when things began to shift for me.
A few years after my mom’s regular conversations of “encouragement”, my adolescent sister was deeply hurt by one of her female friends. While she was trying to scrape pink and purple puffy paint off the mirrored closet doors in her room, I felt my face get hot and could only think of the color red.
“No one could hurt my sister except me,” I announced to no one
No one could hurt my sister, I thought.
Even me I can’t hurt my sister.
I don’t want to hurt her.
I felt my eyes sizzle with a lightning bolt of understanding. Somewhere along the way, I had gone from trying to get her attention the only way I was taught to knowing what I was doing hurt her and using it as retaliation for her repeated rejection.
Determined, more years passed before I felt myself stop this nasty habit of retaliation. I was lucky enough to recognize and nearly cease these childhood antics unless my mother was directly involved. I made it to sixth grade and decided that I didn’t want to be this monster without fully understanding where I kept getting this idea, even though my mother continued to encourage it in every way she could, without anyone outside of the family noticing or at least saying anything.
However, middle school had its own drama, and my sister would still not trust me. Frankly, I don’t blame her. Everything I did and said, every breath I took, irritated her. So I took a step back and let our relationship breathe. I waited and reflected, never really understanding how to achieve my goal.
Ultimately, by some miracle, we reconnected as adults and started sharing our stories, our truths.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she said to me recently as I relayed this whole story to her. Memories, whether hazy or fully formed, started trickling into my consciousness after I left home (which was much later in life than I’d care to admit) before the flood gates of understanding were cracked wide open.
“Still,” I said, “I’ll never forgive myself.”
My sister nodded and paused, letting out a big sigh, creating static on the video call. “You didn’t know any better. You didn’t know what you were doing. This is just another example of why we are the way we are.”
“Dang, that’s f-d up,” my fiancé said as he pulled back his headphones and continued playing a video game.
As I sat staring at the now black screen of my phone, I repeated this story in my head. Trying to find the nuances, the proof that what I realized one morning wasn’t the truth. To gaslight myself into believing that my mom was just trying to help me win my sister’s love.
It’s only now that I write this that I realize my sister’s love was never something to win. It was never a contest or a competition. It certainly was not by pushing her buttons or talking down to her, or by bullying her until she cried.
Her love shines around her when she bakes and hugs a loved one. When she talks about her career in helping others. And in a quiet discussion over the phone on a lazy weekend afternoon, my sister expresses her love for me by simply listening with little judgment between epiphanic moments of despair.
My sister’s love was always there, waiting for its moment of freedom.
The kind of love that I hope will never leave me.
Check out Mending Darkness, Part One out July 2025 for a poetic exploration in healing from narcissistic abuse and intergenerational trauma.