Personal Perspective: My mom was one of 6 sisters who supported each other and kept each other's secrets, no matter what. I felt estranged until I met the other side of the family.
Growing up, my family was a bastion of secrets and sisters: my mom, her five sisters, and my own older sister all mostly lived within driving distance of each other in a kind of family dynasty. I learned early on that you were never allowed to say anything bad about any member of the family, no matter what they had done or said, because family was everything.
They loved certain cousins of mine, like the surgeon who was big on the appearances of the women he dated They adored my cousin, who always mentioned her big Cambridge house and the famous people she knew. She had opinions on everything fromWhen she disparaged my writing and mocked my outfits, I cried to my mother, but my mom said that any criticism of this cousin hurt her deeply and personally, and I was not to speak ill of her ever.
I rebelled. I didn’t want to ignore hurts just because they were from “family.” I didn’t want to keep my opinions silent because they weren’t the same as the family’s. I felt so I was stunned, but my mother emphatically told me I should do what my sister wanted, because a sister was much more important than a niece. But I couldn’t walk away from a family member I loved, no matter my family’s ire. And when my niece married and had kids, they became my family, too.
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