Dear Afrin:

My thoughts: your parents chose to offer you and your sister “their way or the highway”. Your sister chose their way; you chose the highway. It takes courage to choose to depart from your parents’ way, to risk their disapproval and total removal from the family. And then to endure that pain of separation and keep living your life away from them. It takes strength to accept and endure the pain of your sister disapproving of you and give up the dream of her looking up to you as her big sister.

Like you wrote, you weren’t able to kidnap her, you were not able to remove her from your parents. She wouldn’t have left willingly, so yes, you would have had to kidnap her.

Even though the two of you share the same parents, the two of you experienced life at home a bit differently. She experienced many of the same events you did, but at a much younger age. There are events you experienced that she didn’t because she wasn’t born yet. Somehow it came to be that her distress about living without her parents’ approval is way more intense than yours. And fear is our greatest motivator, she fears the distress of being cast away to the highway, fears it too much.

She finds comfort with her parents. I hope you find some comfort knowing she has her own comfort, that she is not as distressed as she would have been if she chose the highway.

anita

Hi Afrin,

You did the greatest thing of all: You gave her tacit permission to do the same thing. That terrifies her. That terrifies your parents. It is just that easy to leave a religion dozens of generations old.

Maybe you thought that it would be easiest to “get” your sister back in your fold since she is twelve. Guess again! She needs your parents and will for several more years. Her turning angry towards you is an instinctive self defense mechanism.

I would give up on her and leave her alone… for now. Then when she is in her late teens/early twenties you reappear. The cool older sister. The one who is living all her forbidden dreams. The parents will be older and more tired. She’ll be an adult.

It will be better, you’ll see.

Best,

Inky

Dear  azu:

You are welcome.

Because arranged marriage is one thing you mentioned about your parents’ religion and practice, I suppose your sister, being eighteen and devoted to your parents, will be soon arranged to be married, then have children, no? If so, things are not likely to change (“I don’t know if or when things may change”)

anita

Dear Afrin:

You took the path less travelled, and I am impressed. The fact that your sister lives in the UK, not in an all Islamic country, and the fact that she will be attending university in which she will have more exposure to life outside the tight community where she now lives, do hold some possibilities. So I can see more reason for hope on your part.

Parents who discourage independence in their children have huge power over their children way into adulthood, and that power cannot and should not … be underestimated.

anita