‘Now our mother has died, should I stay in touch with my estranged sister?’

Dear A&E,

Some 60 years ago, my parents informally adopted a daughter. At my father’s funeral a year ago, my mother said some things that offended my “sister”, including observing that two of the great-grandchildren (in their 20s) had put on weight. My sister never spoke to my mother again; Mum passed away at the beginning of October.

I had notified her in case she wanted a rapprochement, but she never responded, nor did she attend the funeral. However, she is still content to accept 20 per cent of my mother’s estate. I now have the dilemma of whether to stay in touch with my sister. Or should I just let the relationship die?

- Lost

Dear Lost,

We were so moved by your dilemma: your heartbreak and your burden. What we didn’t feel, Lost, is how you feel about your sister. There is an absolute emotional vacuum in between the lines of your letter. We can’t tell if you put quotation marks around the word “sister” to reflect the curious “informal” nature of your relationship; to flag up the resentment you’re feeling towards her right now; or to imply that she has never felt like a sister to you.

What does strike us is the way you have taken on the mantle of family duty so soon after the death of your parents. You tell us in your longer letter that your mother died only weeks ago; your father less than a year before that. You could consider taking your foot off the gas and relieving the pressure on yourself to resolve this, although we understand your instinct to push on.

You did the honourable thing in letting your sister know that your mother was in her dying days. You gave your sister options. But you were the one at the bedside; you were the child sorting out the affairs and sorting through the personal stuff, and now you need to be a little more generous to and gentle with yourself. Give yourself some options. You cannot wrap it all up, Lost. Families aren’t tidy things.

Perhaps you could see this grieving period as a gift – death allows us to release and reframe decades of tensions. But we know nothing about your family dynamics and there is clearly more to this, which is why we took your problem to Donna Lancaster, coach, therapist and author of the brilliant manual for wholehearted living, The Bridge. She suggested it might help if you saw your sister within the context of her story, and has worked with enough abandoned people to recognise the possible themes.

She says that, while we don’t know why your sister was adopted, “we can guess that her own family, for whatever reason, left/died or were unable to care for her. So, this would mean she has experienced one of the deepest core wounds – that of abandonment.” Lancaster goes on to say that your sister will “inevitably have a super-sensitivity to being rejected (including through criticism of her grandchildren)”.

A clumsy comment from an elderly parent might ordinarily be batted off, but, says Lancaster, “for an ‘abandoned’ child, it is yet another rejection, and evidence she is not welcome, from the person who was meant to ‘save’ her”. Lancaster also suggests that, in terms of the will and the estate, unhealed wounded people “can often feel entitled to ‘compensation’, so I am not surprised she is content to accept the money”.

She sums it up neatly: “Hurt people hurt people.”

We believe that you need to take time for you, to work out your own needs in this relationship as well as to grieve the loss of your parents. Perhaps it might help if you separated things out for now. No longer see yourself as tied to your sister by the bonds of filial expectation. You could take a little distance in order to work out whether you want an independent relationship with her.

Lancaster suggests writing her a letter sharing your experience of the past few years, but avoiding blame. You could ask for a conversation – and then wait. You will have done what you can. What she does with that information is up to her. But most importantly, focus on healing your own grief wounds rather than trying to fix others or to make reparations for a past that you had no control over or responsibility for. Taking space isn’t killing the relationship. Let it begin with you, Lost, and maybe you will be found.

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