Today, I wrote a letter to my dead brother. J was a quadriplegic and he had Cerebral Palsy, a traumatic brain injury caused at birth. He grew up completely unable to care for himself. He never went to the bathroom by himself, never walked, never ate or drank without help. He eventually got an electric wheelchair and a communication device and was able to ‘walk and talk,’ but he still depended on others for everything.

J died at age 51 of pneumonia. He had tested negative for Covid, but he died in November of 2020. J’s death sent me into a spiral of depression that for a time I thought would never end. It was almost a year to the day that I first felt happiness again. I had spent an entire year feeling anxious, depressed, or nothing at all. I was suicidal more than once.

The weird thing about it was that I really didn’t expect his dying to hurt as much as it did. I loved him, but his death wasn’t really unexpected. I was surprised by my own pain and grief, because although I had lost other family members [grandmas, grandpas and aunts] with their deaths, I had cried once and moved on with my life.

With my brother, life stopped completely and I lost my ability to function at all in the world.

After I finally started feeling happy again, I mostly just wanted to let my grief fade and pretend everything was okay. But I still felt stuck, and I knew that I was going to have to start working on myself again.

Which is why I started this website, and why I started leaning into parts work and the Internal Family Systems Therapy model again.

All that’s to say, I found a part, and she had a lot to say to my brother. It turns out she was a part of me that I hid growing up. The part that resented having a brother with a disability. I resented him because once my parents had taken care of his needs, there wasn’t really anything left for me.

I wasn’t nurtured or cared for in the way that I needed, and even though it was nobody’s fault, it affected every part of my life. I didn’t get to do a lot of the things I needed to try to do because I had to stay home and watch him [as a child] or because taking me places would have meant an extra hour of work. Loading him up in the car, propping him up with pillows and then unloading him was a nightmare. He also got carsick, so there was always the potential for a barf fest to add to the mix.

I get it now, but back then, the little girl that was me only knew that there were things I wasn’t allowed to do because my older brother prevented it.

And if I tried to express my frustration or hurt at being neglected by the adults around me, I was told, in no uncertain terms, that it was wrong to feel that way because it wasn’t his fault.

I became convinced, pretty early on in my life, that I was a terrible person. Not only did I not get my emotional needs met, but feeling upset about it meant I was a selfish jerk who didn’t deserve to be loved anyway.

So today, the little girl who hated her brother wrote a letter to him. It was cathartic, to say the least, but I also realized that the little girl who was shamed for having needs that weren’t being met [and also shamed for resenting the reason why those needs weren’t met] was not only justified in her feelings, she is the part of me who loves me and refuses to accept being mistreated by others. She is Self-Love.

I also learned that she was hidden away by a protector who believed that having needs was wrong, that asking for those needs to be met was selfish, and that in order to be loved, she had to give everything she had and never ask for anything in return. This protector spent her entire existence trying to be worthy of love, acceptance, and compassion by proving that she was a good person [which she did by caring for others, and neglecting herself].

Because deep down, the belief that I was a terrible person for resenting my brother has colored every part of my life. I hated myself because I was shamed for being a normal child.

I’ve been having conversations with both these parts all day today, and I feel a reconciliation between these parts, both of whom were working toward the same goal, albeit in completely different ways.

It’s okay that part of me hated my brother. The reality is, he did make my life difficult in a lot of ways. He’s probably the main reason I have had such trouble figuring out how to take care of myself, and my feelings for him and the shaming I experienced for having those feelings definitely contributed to my own lifelong self-loathing.

I was neglected as a child, and although none of it was done on purpose, it still left me stunted in some ways and almost completely unable to ask for what I need. In fact, there are times when I have no idea WHAT I need, let alone how to ask for it.

And the part of me who struggled so long to be worthy of love by denying any needs of her own did her very best to protect me from the shame the adults had heaped on me. The need to be worthy and accepted by others is a fundamental need of all humans, and she did what she could to try to get that need met.

I feel grateful to have found these parts and kind of made friends with them today. I can see their beauty, and accept and love them and I want both of them to be active parts of my ‘system.’

I’m looking forward to getting to know them both better and finding out what they want to do from here on out.