Who Gets a Piece of My Birthday Cake?

It is that time of year again, the month of her birthday, when Dee reviews what has happened in the past year – the goals and the surprises. She also considers what, if any, changes she wishes to make to the crucial legal life documents, specifically estate documents such as will, life insurance, and other financial policies, that have beneficiaries and contingency beneficiaries.

As Dee began reviewing the past year, her mind journeyed beyond just the past year to the last few years – the who and what that comprise her life. The who are people and the what are causes that she believes in which carry out meaningful work in the community. Our conversation also went to how the relationships with people in her life have either strengthened, dwindled, or in some cases, died. She seemed to focus on her sibling relationships, and with this came sadness, not celebration, as she recognized the sibling estrangement that she had been experiencing.

Sibling estrangement: No piece of cake

Sibling estrangement is not unusual. If you value family, as Dee does, you might find that not having a sibling relationship can have a more significant emotional impact than you might have thought could happen. When you experience a limited relationship with your sibling/s, feelings of grief and sadness can come in waves, which is what happened for Dee.

“Ghosted” is the status that society would assign because one of Dee’s siblings abruptly stopped communicating with her.

To “be ghosted” is when someone cuts off all communication without explanation. According to the New York Times, “Most of us think about it in the context of digital departure: a friend not responding to a text, or worse, a lover, but it happens across all social circumstances, and it’s tied to the way we view the world.” The article further acknowledges that social rejection of any form activates the same pain pathways in the brain as physical pain, implying that rejection and pain are biologically linked. This applies to ghosting from friends, lovers, and family members. Keeping in touch with others has become a survival skill for us. Our brains have a social monitoring system that uses emotion, people, and environmental clues to instruct us on how to respond in different situations. When you are ghosted, though, there is no closure, so you start questioning yourself and your decisions, sabotaging your self-worth and self-esteem.

For reasons Dee is unaware of, this particular sibling—a sister—ghosted her a few months before the pandemic started. Two years later, Dee still does not know what happened. At first, she did not even understand she was being ghosted. Dee explains to me that ghosted is a new lived experience for her, one she would rather not have experienced.

“It hasn’t been a piece of cake, emotionally,” she quietly shares with me. “During the first twelve months, I kept in touch with this sister, sending the occasional message through text and cards for special occasions. In one text and two cards, I even offered to go to counseling together to get help from a therapist we both know and trust in communicating and getting through whatever needed resolving.” But all her communications and bids (attempts to connect) to repair whatever needed repairing went unanswered. After a year, Dee stopped reaching out.

“Two years of no communication seems like forever, and incredibly long given the pandemic and the thought of the possibility that anyone in our family could get Covid and God-forbid die,” she tells me. She also explains how she doesn’t like “this state of non-communication,” yet there is nothing more she feels she could do.

Will removing this sibling as a beneficiary to her estate give her some closure or a sense of release from the pain of loss? She is willing to find out. She decided she will share that “piece of cake” with an organization that will benefit from her financial gift. She considers this and says she can feel happy and content with it. “Happy birthday to me!” she exclaims.

Why invite someone to the party when they rarely reply?

While exploring reasons for sibling estrangement to support my work with clients as a life coach and hypnotist, I found that estrangement is a global phenomenon. This article by BBC Future got me thinking about another sibling relationship Dee mentioned: “In Germany, higher education levels of adult children are associated with higher rates of conflict with their parents. One theory [for family estrangement] is that highly educated family members are likely to be more geographically mobile, and less likely to need each other financially.” This makes me wonder if that is part of the reason her brother in Europe rarely communicates with her, and it fits with what Dee shares with me.

Dee considers if her brother’s conflict with their parents and issues from childhood are why he rarely corresponds, even by text, with her. Maybe the brother cannot separate his anger from childhood from her, which is why they have a strained relationship. He has lived and worked in another country overseas for several decades. It is as if after graduating from university, he ran as far away as he could from the primary and extended family. And when she initiates communication with him, it is always a roll of the dice on whether he will reply. He may be happier with this distance in their sibling relationship compared to being reminded about childhood. Maybe he finds relief in the geographical and communication distance.

“Maybe I will find relief in gifting what I would have gifted him from my estate to an organization that will benefit and appreciate my financial contribution,” she shares aloud. She smiles and remarks, “That’s satisfying. Happy birthday to me!”

Waxing and waning

And then there is Dee’s third sibling. She comments that this relationship is difficult to understand. “We communicate, but not often. We have had different levels of closeness at different points in life.” When Dee initiates communication with this sibling, she can count on a reply—usually. But she explains that the sibling does not always say when she will be in town visiting, or if she does, does not visit her. “Well, rarely.” But they do communicate. Sometimes.

Dee wonders if she should also gift the portion she would have bequeathed to this sibling to an organization that will appreciate the gift. This one is a bit more difficult to decide. She decides she’ll wait on that decision.

When did the party fall apart?

The sibling estrangement that Dee experiences hits her deeply. As the eldest sibling, she looked toward her siblings from a very protective, almost “parent-like” role for as long as she can remember. It might be birth-position related or that her siblings were all under the age of five when her mother was left a single parent. You can imagine how a single parent might rely on the eldest child to care for the others. This is what happened to Dee, and, she says, “It was not easy.”

Dee recalls that her siblings’ anger towards their traumatic life situation was often directed at her. Later, as a young teenager, she began seeing the psychologist at school to help sort through complicated emotions. “Things were difficult at home, with discipline landing in the ‘abuse’ category. There was a lot of adult pent-up anger and explosions misdirected to us children.”

No longer willing to live in an abusive and explosive household, and for the sake of her siblings’ and her mental health and physical wellbeing, Dee thrust her life into an extraordinarily challenging journey by confronting the abuser. After witnessing yet another “disciplinarian event,” she demanded that things change because this type of discipline was not right and needed to stop. The “conversation” ended with the controlling directive from the abuser, her mother: “My house, my rules, and if you don’t like it, leave.” Dee moved out the following morning and reported the abuse to the Children’s Aid Society (CAS). As a result, CAS stepped in, her siblings were interviewed, and their mother was required to attend parenting classes. Dee’s life changed dramatically as she was now “out of the nuclear family,” in the big world, and having to make a living to survive on her own.

Dee's feelings about the sibling estrangement she experiences run deep because of her sacrifices as a very young adult to effect change in the home.

Accepting the change in family dynamics

One of the common reasons for disinheriting someone is “loss of relationship”; that was one area that was top of mind as Dee thought about her estate during her birthday month.

The ghosting by the first sibling prompted her initial consideration of removing any sibling as a beneficiary. She held off removing her only because of the pandemic.

Plenty of families do not get along. The problem is that family members are generally the default recipients of one’s estate. After her husband and stepson, who else would she leave her estate to without children of her own? “Certainly not a brother that doesn’t want to stay connected,” she tells me. Up until this conversation, she thought she had to leave her estate to family.

But now, two years into the pandemic and the ongoing lack of connection with siblings, as estate papers are reviewed and amended, Dee decides she needs to recognize the fullness of the sibling estrangement. In Dee’s opinion, it is essential to review and update estate documents while still having the opportunity. “I can do that and need to do that,” she says with growing confidence.

Perhaps one day, there will be reconciliation between Dee and her estranged siblings, but for now, she is accepting this family dynamic and changing who the beneficiaries are of her estate. With this comes sadness, not celebration. But she tells me she can joyfully still celebrate by designating a few community causes as beneficiaries.

“Now, let’s sign those papers, cut a piece of that birthday cake, and celebrate!” she tells me.

Happy Birthday, Dee.