I’m having trouble keeping track of dates lately. It’s pretty silly. I thought that my first meeting of the Holistic Moms Network (we’re going to talk about organic gardening and worm farms and such) was last Tuesday, but uhm oops–it’s this coming Tuesday instead. I found this out after I had already driven down to south San Jose. oops.

So I called my sister to see if she wanted to spend some time with Shanna and me. She did and we met up at the mall near her house. We sat in the food court and talked for about 45 minutes. Then we walked around the mall talking for another half an hour. Then we headed to my car and talked for another hour even though I was supposed to be leaving. It was really really good. Our talking meandered through many many different subjects from fluffy idle chit-chat to intense processy kinds of stuff. We actually managed to talk about her penchant for rewriting history. I got her to acknowledge that she does it. I was really really really happy she finally acknowledged it. We talked about why she does it. She told me that she sometimes can’t psychologically cope with admitting the terrible things she has done so she “forgets”. I think that is a huge thing for her to say. I told her about the book Shame and Guilt that I found very helpful and she said she would be interested in reading it and pointed out that her birthday is in a couple of weeks. So I’m ordering it for her. We talked about the blame and shame we each feel for things that happened in our family. It was kind of interesting to talk about those things finally with someone who was there with me through the trauma. Our perspectives are so different.

We spoke ruefully about our mother. I pointed out how I believe our mother’s behavior is about playing favorites and Denise said she thinks mom is just thoughtless. I hate to come down from my position on anything, but the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Sissy pointed out a few ways in which she feels our mother has treated me badly and the sense of validation I got from that was intense and overwhelming. We talked about my brother (the one who is still alive) and how he has cut us both out of his life. She said that as far as she is concerned he is dead. I told her that he really isn’t dead, it would be easier if he was. That made her pause and think. After a while she admitted that I was right–we have less (internal) conflict about Tommy (the dead brother). We talked about whether chosen family takes the place of biological family. I told her that recently my experience of my chosen family is that they don’t take the bonds any more seriously than my biological family so I’m pretty lonely. She tried to do her blustery, “You don’t need anyone…” thing and I told her that I do need my family. She hugged me when I cried.

We talked about when I turned her in to CPS. That was an interesting conversation. I told her that, for lack of a less geeky way of explaining it, I am lawful good. I have to follow the law. I can’t live with myself if I don’t. She asked me how I would feel if my actions sent her to jail (I didn’t even quibble about whose actions would be responsible) and I told her that I would feel terrible and guilty and ashamed but I would have to do it anyway. I told her about the weeks of crying I did before and after turning her in. She seemed surprised that I cared. It was pretty intense but I think that discussing it might help. She said that she is waiting till my niece turns 18 to give me her address, but that she will do so then. I don’t really blame her.

We also spent a while discussing the sexual merits of our various partners over the years. That part was pretty funny. 🙂