"Am I Still a Sister?"

The question no one prepares you for after sibling loss.

“Well, now that you’re an only child...”

My father said this to me a few months after my brother Tony died. His intent has never been to hurt me, and it wasn’t that day either. He was grieving, too. But the words hit me in a place I didn’t know was exposed.

I remember the sentence landing somewhere in my chest and staying there.

I wasn’t an only child. I am not an only child. I have a brother. He’s just not here anymore.

Here’s the part that makes it more complicated. My father is a bereaved sibling himself. Twice. His older brother was murdered as a teenager in Italy in the 1950s. And, one of his sisters died of a heart attack in her early fifties, about 24 years ago.

He has lived this loss for decades, and even he spoke those words.

I don't remember my exact words, but I told him that wasn't true, that Tony is my brother, even if he's dead. We can't erase him, just like we can't erase the siblings my father himself has lost.

My father has told me that he thinks of his brother every day. Yet, even he who has carried sibling loss for over sixty years spoke words highlighting how invisible this part of sibling grief is. It's not about caring. It's about never having been given the language.

🐺

I sat down with Nina Rodriguez for the latest episode of The Broken Pack™, and she told me a story I related to immediately.

Nina lost her only sibling, Yosef, to fentanyl poisoning in 2019. A few months later, she started a new job. During introductions, a coworker, someone she had just met, casually said, “Well, now that you’re an only child...”

(Nina used the phrase "only sibling" in our conversation on the podcast, but later told me the coworker's actual words were "only child.")

Nina said everything went silent. She couldn’t hear anything after that.

A stranger, for all intents and purposes, felt completely okay redefining Nina’s entire sense of identity in one sentence. Nina had to excuse herself. She went to the restroom and cried. She couldn’t function the rest of the day.

When she told me this, I felt my own memory rise up. Different person, different words, similar wound.

🐺

Here’s what I’ve learned, as a grieving sister, as a thanatologist, and as a psychologist who works with loss: the identity piece of sibling loss is one of the most disorienting parts, and almost nobody talks about it.

When you lose a parent, people understand (at least on the surface) that you’re still someone’s child. Even adults have started calling themselves “orphans” after losing both parents. When you lose a spouse, the word “widow” or “widower” exists. Those labels and understandings are painful, but it gives you a place to stand.

When you lose a sibling, there’s no word. There’s no role that society hands you. (I've been half-seriously lobbying for "sobling" but it hasn't caught on yet.) And so other people fill the silence with their own logic. You had one brother. He died. So now you’re an only child. It’s arithmetic to them. To you, it’s an erasure.

🐺

Nina struggled with that same question: Am I still a sister if my brother is dead?

How she answered it is one of my favorite moments in this episode. I’ll let her tell you.

I’ve talked with a lot of bereaved siblings over the years, on the podcast, in my personal life, and in my work. The identity question comes up again and again. Not always in the same words, but always in the same place: that disorienting gap between who you know yourself to be and how the world now sees you.

You do not stop being a sibling because your sibling died. The relationship doesn’t end. It changes form. And you get to decide what that looks like for you.

In this episode, Nina and I also talk about shame, fentanyl, the grief hierarchy, what happens when you hit year five and realize you never made a plan for year six, and how Nina pivoted from a real estate career to life-affirming grief work.

🎧 Listen to Episode 42: Shining a Light on Sibling Loss, Addiction, and Life’s Little Pleasures

If this is landing somewhere in you, try writing on one of these:

• When someone asks how many siblings you have, what do you say? Has your answer changed over time?

• Has anyone ever redefined your identity as a sibling without your permission? What did that feel like?

Pick one. Write for five minutes. No editing, no judgment. Just let it come.

Warmly,

Angela

Tony’s little sister 🐺

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The Broken Pack: Stories of Sibling Loss is available wherever you listen to podcasts.

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