The excerpt below is from our webinar “Strengths and Challenges for Siblings of Individuals with Duchenne” with guest speaker Emily Holl. Emily Holl is the Director of the Sibling Support Project. Click here to listen to the full episode.
Siblings & Their Own Identity
A lot of the challenges that we see our siblings struggle with – especially the older siblings – is having an identity outside of their role as a caregiver for their sibling.
Many siblings struggling with the guilt of that. They also struggle with this idea of self-determination like, “Can I have a life outside of being a sibling?” The answer is, “Absolutely yes.”
If you read our collection of nuggets of wisdom from siblings all across the country, by and large, one of the first things siblings say they have a right to is the right to one’s own life.
I’ll just share with you personally.
Building My Life
Growing up, my parents were always encouraging me to pursue whatever it was I was interested in, – whether it was sports or theater or music or whatever it was, – to have jobs, to dream big in terms of going away to school, to study abroad and to really live a full life and to not worry about being my brother’s keeper.
“The right to one’s own life.”
The fact that they encouraged me so much to do that actually encouraged me to come back, to want to play a role in my brother’s life – not out of guilt – but out of feeling that I had a very full life and that he’s part of that.
Integrating the Pieces
But having that latitude and having that freedom enabled me to figure out who I am and what I wanted my life to be about, and then I had something to factor my brother into.
So it wasn’t so much feeling that I was living my life for him, but that now I could live my life with him because I had built this life and figured out what that looks like for us.
For me it was a way of determining how do I integrate all of these things?
Because my parents encouraged me to go out, spread my wings, and live my life, I could figure out what my life was about. Then I could figure out how to fit my brother in.