Nikita Amin’s Reviews > Who's the Favorite?: The Loving, Messy Realities of Sibling Relationships > Status Update

‘Memories are the stories we tell ourselves, and they are the building blocks of the self. But if you can't remember the stories, ‘who are you?'

And what happens if there’s huge parts of your childhood years that you can’t remember?

“Kenneth Doka coined the phrase ‘disenfranchised grief' - the grief that persons experience when they incur a loss that is not or cannot be openly acknowledged, publicly mourned, or socially supported.” - the hierarchy of grief is very relatable, especially when you’re in a situation where it appears that others need looking after more than you

“What can be really damaging is a family dynamic where parents play siblings off against one another, where they feel like they've been pitted against each other for "who will be a winner and win the parents love?", or “who can do the most?" That can lead them to feel as if their long-term sibling relationship is really strained.” - hard relate

“It is important to think a bit about how the simple idea of ‘not behaving in the way that this family expects' can actually be more complex than that. It can often be a case of 'you’re not performing your role in the way that allows this family to repeatedly paper over the cracks and carry on in the way it always has. In instances like that, making any kind of stand can be confronting and very uncomfortable”

I’m not sure if my siblings and I have any familects.. definitely food for thought

“Memories are shaped by the self who is doing the remembering and when the person’s beliefs and emotions change so does the story” - I never considered this before. I assumed that the memory stays as we remembered it when it happened because it’s attached to the feelings you had at that time.