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Reconciling Sibling Relationships

Sibling relationships may just be the most important, says marriage and family therapist Alexandra Kennedy: They last longer than any others. They also are the patterns we model in relating to others. At midlife, Kennedy says, “there is often a life transition that brings up the opportunity for reconciliation. Especially when parents or siblings get ill or die, there is much more investment in wanting to reconcile, because ‘this is my family,’ and it’s what we’ve got.”

But there can be a lot of volatile emotions and rawness in communications, Kennedy warns, because “so much is carried from the past. But on the other side is an opportunity to heal, because grief stirs everything up. At midlife, you get tired of the pain.”

“Although my sister’s and my story may not seem sensational,” says Scott Azim Krabler, “we have come to peace at midlife. I attribute that peace to Marshall Rosenberg’s model of non-violent communication,” which teaches that our pain derives from how we choose to look at things — especially seeing others as “the enemy” — and is based in a belief in humanity’s innate goodness.

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