Wild Sibling Grief Prompts: Still Older?
A follow-up to Still Older. Free for every subscriber.
This week I wrote about Tony’s birthday and the grief math that has carried me through seven of his birthdays without him. If you have not read it yet, Still Older is here.
I promised three more prompts. Here they are.
Each one stands alone. You do not have to write to all three, and you do not have to write to them in order. Pick the one that catches you. Set a timer for five minutes. No editing. No judgment. Just write.
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1. How old is your sibling to you today?
How old they are to you, right now, in the version of them you carry?
The number might be the age frozen on a calendar the day they died. It might be the age they would have grown into. It might be no number at all, if they died before you could form memories of them, or if the math has stopped behaving like math. Write the number, or the absence of one. Then write the math you ran to land there.
Observe what comes up for you as you think about all of this. What emotions or bodily sensations occur? Write about this for 5 minutes.
If you want to go further, write what your sibling would say if you told them the number out loud. (I know Tony would laugh.)
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2. What does holding them at that age give you, and what does it cost?
Every version of the math gives something and takes something else.
If you hold your sibling at the age they died, write about what is preserved in that math, and what is lost. If you hold them at the age they would be, write what becomes possible, and what becomes harder to carry. If you hold them at no age at all, write what that lets in, and what it asks of you.
For example: For years I held Tony at the age (46 years, 10 months) he was when he died. That kept the order of us in place. He was still my older brother on a calendar. The cost was that every birthday of mine arrived as evidence I was leaving him behind. When I realized I was going to surpass the birthdays he saw, I began to feel anxious. This year, I began to continue to think of him as older, even if he was unable to be physically here to see the birthdays and the years increase in number. This gave me back the retort I had used my whole life. He is still older, because “older brother” was never a number. The cost of holding him at 46 was anxiety. The gift of allowing myself to change this was letting the math move with me, allowing him to be older still. There is some level of comfort in knowing he is still my older brother. That has taken me six years to learn how to do.
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3.The age you have not yet reached.
Today, look ahead. There is likely an age, a birthday, or a milestone on the horizon that you have already started thinking about.
Write what it is, and what you imagine it will be like to reach it. Write what you want to bring with you when you do. Will you find ways to keep your sibling present or not? There is no right or wrong approach.
If you want to go further, write what you hope someone will say to you that day.
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These three prompts are yours. Write them all, write one, write none. The writing matters more than the order or the polish or the page count.
A longer set of nine prompts arrives later this week for paid subscribers. It goes further into the math, including the math specific to your relationships and dynamics (e.g. the math twins do, the math an only surviving sibling carries, the math that begins before memory, the math of the role the family slid you into). It offers a slower, more structured way to come back to this work across more than one sitting.
If any of this is landing, share it with a surviving sibling who might need it, or hold it for yourself. Both matter.
Warmly,
Angela
Tony’s little sister 🐺
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Wild Grief is written by Dr. Angela Dean, PsyD, FT, GTMR (psychologist, thanatologist, and Tony’s surviving sibling). Interactions with The Broken Pack, LLC, Dr. Angela Dean, and its content do not constitute a therapeutic or professional psychological relationship with Dr. Dean. All content is educational and informational, not clinical advice. If you or someone you know is in crisis, please reach out to your local crisis line or warm line, or visit findahelpline.com.
Wild Grief is original work by Dr. Angela Dean and is protected by copyright. You are welcome to share posts via link. Please do not copy, reproduce, or republish content elsewhere without written permission. Certain resources from The Broken Pack, including A Surviving Sibling’s Bill of Rights, are separately released under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) and may be shared in full, with attribution, for non-commercial use. Those resources will say so explicitly.
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