Sister’s Silent Engagement
When Your Sister Can’t Handle a Conversation With You – What That Really Says About Her Readiness for Marriage
Today I’m sitting with a truth that hurts more than most of my TBI symptoms combined.
My sister just announced she is engaged and planning her wedding.
And I won’t be there.
Not because I don’t love her. Not because I don’t wish her every happiness. But because she has cut me out of her life completely. No calls. No texts. Years of her not wanting to share in anything real together. She has decided that any real conversation with me is too overwhelming for her mental health, and that I am the problem.
Repair Over Exile
Why Cutting Out a Sibling Is Almost Always the Wrong Choice
There’s a quiet epidemic happening in many families today: siblings cutting off siblings, family cutting off family. What often starts as “I just need some space” can slowly harden into permanent estrangement. While the person asking for distance may believe they’re protecting their peace, the reality is far more painful — for both sides.
Estrangement Meets Mercy
Divine Mercy Sunday: Finding Forgiveness and Healing in Family Estrangement – Lessons from St. Faustina’s Diary
Every year, the Sunday after Easter brings us Divine Mercy Sunday—a feast day given to the Church through the visions and writings of St. Maria Faustina Kowalska. It’s not just another holy day on the calendar. It’s a profound invitation from Jesus Himself to plunge into the depths of God’s Mercy, especially when life feels shattered by pain, rejection, or loss. For me, this feast hits especially close to home because of a wound that still aches: my sisters cutting me out of their lives after my brain injury, right in the middle of their teenage rebellion.
I’m Not Normal
Three years. That’s how long it’s been since I felt like the version of myself that other people used to know.
A traumatic brain injury didn’t just knock me out physically—it rewired how I think, how I speak, how I show up in relationships, and even how I see myself. For a long time I described it the only way that felt honest: I have a broken brain. Some days I still feel like a toddler trapped in an adult body—full of big emotions, zero filter, and the constant fear that I’m never going to be “normal” enough for the people I love.
But here’s what I’ve learned in three years of messy, imperfect recovery: “normal” was never the goal. The goal was honest. The goal was trying. And the goal was slowly becoming someone I could look in the mirror and say, “You’re doing your best, and that’s enough today.” The goal wasn’t to be loved, but to love.