Sisters are often said to be our first examples of what female friendships and non-motherly love should look like. However, not every woman has a good relationship with her sister.
For some women, their sisters were the first to slut shame them. For other women, their sisters cheated them out of finances and even familial inheritance.
In our latest piece, Urban Woman Magazine asked some women to share their experiences of negative relationships with their sisters and the steps they are taking to heal.
Read their responses below.
AJ
My sister isn’t really my sister by the same parents but she grew up with me. My sister wasn’t really a sister so by extension not a daughter but she carried all of those responsibilities nonetheless like we were family.
I was deeply stubborn and insensitive, especially to her. Because as far as I’m concerned she was a second mother but my earliest memory was me being happy when she left cause she really kept me in line so that’s something I regret.
Some of it I was really at fault but she had an accident a couple of years back and I was not near her and it broke me. It made me see how horrible I really was to someone who would always look out for me.
Internalized misogyny or not, I feel your family would always have your back no matter how bad your shit is smelling.
I want to point to the sweet things she did.
She always scrubbed my cracked feet when I came back from school. She washed my clothes that smelled like ammonia when I came back from high school.
She taught me to learn to braid my hair. She taught me to budget. She taught me to cook and she introduced us to more Northern foods like kunun. She stood in emotionally when my mother couldn’t.
So I have really had my qualms with her but she is just a girl.
A girl who came at 7 to start nurturing a child and hasn’t dropped the job since.
She is a feminist icon in her own way even though she won’t say it outrightly.
Rebecca
Hmmm, finally being able to talk about it feels like phew!
I think it all started when discipline was disguised as ‘abuse’ as a younger sister to a ‘strict tough’ elder sister. Secondary school was horrible because she kept stalking me. We slept in the same room (according to my parents, it’s better for sibling bonding). She would go through my school bag, ransack my clothes and invade my personal space and my thoughts.
She was always so desperate to instill discipline on behalf of my parents (who weren’t strict) she took it upon herself to physically abuse (beating, slaps, hide my things out of disco), verbally abuse (through condescension, hammering on the fact that I’m young and dumb etc).
The moment I knew I had terror as a sister was when she was labelled as a “bully” in secondary school; people would casually ask me how I coped 😂😂 it was hell (still my parents did nothing, they kept saying I’m sensitive and she knows better as elder sister).
As I matured, especially as a very very very very attractive girl, she started inserting spies in school (she had graduated) to know who is toasting me or who I’m dating (so I kept my affairs secretly and this toxicity made me a good liar). I remembered when she found out I sneaked out to attend a party and she slapped me very hard, my ear was blocked for days. To punish me she hid my phone for 3 weeks (I actually thought I misplaced it).
Throughout university, I blocked her from all my social media and I maintained my distance. We barely saw each other and I was finally able to discover myself and start to relearn healthy patterns. I also got to know that people had fantastic relationships/friendships with their elder sisters. I was very jealous.
For me, I had a sister that prided in giving me her ‘hand me down’ publicity. I also wept secretly cause I really wish, still wish I had a friendship with my sister. Everything that has to do with teenage hood, womanhood, I learnt on my own and through online research, even dealing with men.
The toxicity started again when we had to live together once again because I relocated to Lagos and boy oh boy, I almost lost my mind. A part of me always knew she was doing all that because she’s jealous of me, it was through discernment I realized she was a naturally bitter person and projected her own imperfections onto me and the more I blossomed, the more she felt she needed to turn up the heat.
She made me split the bill 50/50 when I moved to Lagos despite the fact that I wasn’t earning much and she was earning way higher (she insisted from the first day I arrived Lagos: electricity bill o, service charge o, groceries o etc). I was earning so little and I barely had anything left after split bills and transport. To top it, I was in a very toxic workplace and I couldn’t even share with my sister (we don’t even have a relationship to start with).
Anyway I survived, she still kept her toxic nature and she would get verbally abusive and physically abusive, she was very stone cold. I could be sick and she was so ice cold, but when she’s ill I would run around. Also I was also the one doing house chore and cooking and market, I was more or less a house help doing corporate work on the side.
As someone who serves a living God, things got better for me and I started to draw boundaries when she started prying into how much I was earning and how I was able to afford a wig, clothes etc.
Sometimes she would throw her ‘hand me downs’ and I started to say no to them, because I could now afford to get myself pricey things (It took a lot of fighting and all that). The moment I had my own confidence in Christ, I drew a gigantic line between what I grew up experiencing and who I would become for nations that would come of me.
The major turn around was when I got into a healthy godly relationship and I found my person and I got to experience and relive my childhood. Everything I missed out on, he made sure I experienced it in the healthiest ways possible. Even then, I never introduced her to him, but she knew about him but in faint details and I made it clear.
We still talk on the surface, but I’m not sure we can ever be close or friends and that’s okay.
Angel Nduka-Nwosu is a writer, journalist and editor. She moonlights occasionally as a podcaster on As Angel Was Sayin’. Catch her on all socials @asangelwassayin.