Welcome to my site. I hope you find here a place of common ground and comfort if you are dealing with the loss of a sibling.
"No one thing has gotten me through my years of grieving. It has been many things and many moments in time strung together; a string of pearls. It has been music - always the music, an antidote I know won't let me down. It has been stacks of journals, therapy chairs, rocking chairs, front porches at sunrise, couches and park benches; blue skies and gray skies, sunny days of relief and telling thunderstorms. It has been countless conversations with my sisters, strangers and friends leading to insights of wisdom arriving in the dark of night. It's been movies and plays, songs and poetry. It has been sought-out retreats and unexpected places. Staring mindlessly out windows, watching traffic, wondering where everyone is going, where they've come from and if they've lost a sibling?" Life Out of Order, page 107
As a young adult I have lost my three brothers in separate experiences; two to death and one drastically altered after suffering a traumatic brain injury in a car accident.
What I found unique to sibling loss is the void left in the order of our sibling-ship. My family started with six of us; three boys and three girls. My childhood was full of unique and dynamic expressions of our relationship to each other. Individually we're defined by and added to the whole; the proverbial sum being greater then the parts.
When my first (middle) brother died we went from six to five and the gap was immeasurable. When my second (oldest) brother died going from five to four was incomprehensible and the possibility of going from four to three (with my youngest brothers life threatening car accident) felt beyond my ability to reconcile. The grief has been isolating because although as adult siblings we had our own lives, our own friends and our own current adult families it is only my siblings that hold the infinite history of growing up together. Suddenly the circuit broke. The connection went static and it never came back into focus.
To say it has been distressing, painful, sad, breathtaking, profound, devastating, lonely, and unexpectedly motivating does not fully capture my experience of grieving my three brothers.
It has been a long journey of searching, reconciling and wandering around misplaced as I lost each of my brothers. I will say that while my life will never be the same without them I have found a way to live, knowing they are gone, and being grateful to have know them.
My book, Life Out of Order A Story of Sibling Loss and Living with Traumatic Brain Injury, is the story of my relationship with my siblings, what happened to them, and how I have moved on with my life after losing them.
