Where do I begin? It feels like a lifetime has passed this year and my sister and I’s problems started years before. I’ll do my best to summarize. 5 years ago my sister moved to where I live because she met her soon to be husband here. We were close at the time. I am married and me and my husband were in counseling. I was dealing with the emotional repercussions of childhood sexual abuse by my uncle, my father’s brother. At this time, no one in my family knew about anything. In therapy I was working on writing and letter to my dad and just trying to figure out how to tell my parents everything so I could heal. One night, my sister and I were out to dinner. We had a couple of drinks and the topic weighed heavy on my heart. I ended up confiding in her hoping to ease the pain of telling my parents by telling her first. Long story short, my sister had a reaction I did not expect. She got upset and left me in the restaurant. I searched for her and couldn’t find her and found her back at my house. When I found her, she was on the phone with my parents crying and telling them everything. I was in shock, humiliated, ashamed, and just embarrassed beyond belief. I was so angry and told her to leave and never to talk to me again. I stopped my therapy and didn’t speak to anyone in my family for close o 6 months. Eventually Lauren and I reconciled and I forgave her. She did apologize but always, there were buts and ifs attached. She could never just say I’m sorry.

over a year passed and my sister asked me to be the maid of honor in her wedding. I agreed but was hesitant because it was not like our relationship was something I trusted completely. However, I figured it was something I would regret if I did not do. During the wedding I was completely caught off guard as they announced his name in remembrance of him while I was standing next to her on the altar. I stood there in pain and in shock. And though it probably didn’t register to my parents, or anyone else in the room, I felt the same shame again. When the ceremony finished I looked at the program and was even more shocked to see that she had also included his name in her program. It wasn’t just the act of putting his name in her ceremony after I told her that hurt, it was that she hadn’t even thought enough of me to tell me this was going to happen and to be prepared for it. No one knew my pain except for my amazing husband. I managed to get through the night and even gave a speech which felt like a complete lie while I was giving it.

After the wedding I decided that this was a huge lapse in judgement but that I just didn’t have it in me to go into things with her again. I think I gave up because I was trying to self preserve and didn’t want to rehash everything from my past. A few months later we got into an argument about something completely unrelated and I lost it on her. I began screaming at her about her and asking her how she could do that to me. It was not a graceful moment and I have come to regret it. After that incident, I could not talk to her for a couple of months because I needed to get over my anger. Again, she apologized. However in her apology she justified her actions saying that it would be rude not to mention his name and she thought long and hard about how that would make my 90 year old grandparents feel. Both, who have dementia. I found it ridiculous that she had thought so hard about how it would make them feel but didn’t think at all about how it would make her own sister feel.

I eventually accepted her apology but honestly never trusted or felt the same about her again. Since we live in the same town and our husbands were close we continued to hang out on the weekends. Also, we became close with her 2 step children and I loved them dearly and wanted to spend time with them.

Fast forward 2 years, me and my husband had been trying to get pregnant for 2 years with no success and eventually found out that we were infertile. He has severe male factor infertility. We were told we could try IVF but we may never be able to have our own biological children due to the severity of his condition. We were devastated but we decided not to give up hope and we searched for a dr. immediately. We jumped right in to the IVF process knowing the battle we had ahead of us but unfortunately we were still dealing with our grief of our diagnosis at the same time. During our first cycle, my sister and her husband were around and few inappropriate things were said on a regular basis. My brother in law would talk about trying to get my sister pregnant on a regular basis to my husband who couldn’t get me pregnant. It was very strange. I really think they were incapable of understanding the severity of our situation. We let things go but tension was building and we probably should have said something along the way.

My first cycle was a horrible failure, we spent 25 thousand dollars to get the medical help we needed and the Doctor made a mistake and we lost all 23 of my eggs. I was devastated! I was in a terrible amount of grief over everything. 2 weeks later my sister was on her way to our house to go our with us with friends for the first time since our loss to have dinner and try to cheer up. She came over 30 minutes early and as soon as she walked in, she just smiled and said, I have to tell you something. “I’m pregnant”. I was in shock. It stung so hard. I kept my composure but deep down I was in so much pain. It was hard enough after our diagnosis to even see a pregnant woman, much less have my sister tell me in such a causal way, without my husband by my side.

That night I wrote a letter to her and my family that I was grieving. I said that I could not speak to anyone and that I needed time to process things and that unfortunatiely that meant that I could not be there for her during her pregnancy. I hoped they could all understand. I had to deal with my depression and grief and take care of us. My sister was angry that I could not be there for her. She had her husband send us an email that was inappropriate and she never contacted me.

We haven’t talked in 6 months. I reached out a couple of times and it has gone terrible wrong. I even called to apologize for anything that i had done to hurt her. She just could never understand how to not take this personally. She says that my infertility and my reaction to her announcement has cast a dark shadow over her whole pregnancy.

My husband and I tried IVF one more time and are so happy to announce that we are now 10 weeks pregnant!!! It is truly a miracle! Unfortunately, the issues with my sister have created a mess within my family and I just want peace. I reached out again to try to see if she wanted to go to lunch or just agree to disagree for the family’s sake and she ended up screaming for 10 minutes on the phone. She is very very angry. This was our last contact a couple of days ago. I am not sure now what to do. I feel so defeated and as if this is going to continue to plague our family and my own heart forever.

If you have read this, I cannot tell you how much I appreciate your time. If you have any words of wisdom they would be greatly appreciated. I am at a complete lost and willing to look at this from any perspective. Please Help!