Fiona McColl on Siblings

While we can be “thrown into” relationship with our siblings, the quality of being a “brother” or a “sister” requires the same nurturing, care and attention to developing and maintaining relationship demanded by any other close and connected relationship. Mutuality of parentage, does not a best friend make.

Brothers and sisters have the capacity to push our buttons like no other person {and of course, we’re given the same ‘gift’ to push theirs}. Across our lifespan we may grow, develop and change, but our siblings have the ability to throw us back into family roles that we may be a lot less willing to play; the baby, the responsible one, the caretaker, the mediator, the trouble maker or the scapegoat, the clown, the lost kid, the loser … Many of us aren’t all that interested in playing those roles out now that we are grown up and busy living our lives as distinct and separate people. It can also be hard work to get to know your sibling as a person outside of the roles you both used to play within the family system.

Our relationships with our siblings can also be part of the “collateral damage” that occurs when there are estrangements between us and our parents. Lines are drawn, sides are taken and the sibling relationship is often irreparably damaged. For some people who are estranged, this family civil war is cultivated, alliances are strategically developed and explosions of connections are just one more part of the ongoing war.
-Fiona McColl
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