Hey everyone. First a little context. I recently estranged from my dad and step mom and am low contact with my mother. My sister who is 5 years younger than me estranged from everyone on my dads side 5 years ago. She still had good relationship with my mom until recently. We both were verbally emotionally and occasionally physically abused through our whole childhoods.
I didn’t talk to my sister much after she estranged because my dad didn’t tell me the whole story and I thought she left over trivial reasons. Even then I think part of the problem was that I was so scared of him I didn’t register that I was independent of him now and do now need to be scared of him any more.
I apologized to my sister and we have been texting off and on for a few months trying to talk and get comfortable talking to each other again. Eventually she asked if she could call me. We talked for 2.5 hours followed by another 2 hour gaming session venting about how messed up things were growing up and validating that some of the worst things were real and that we weren’t crazy. It was pure catharsis. I felt like I could finally talk to my sister as an adult and bond with her. She’s so much more mature now. She’s a lot like me. She’s articulate with her thoughts and feelings. We both are now. We both healed enough to acknowledge that even though we were mean to each other as kids it was the result of a HORRIBLE upbringing.
But now a fear keeps nagging me. I don’t want to lose the bond with her. I don’t want to mess up. I don’t want to text too much or too little. I am so worried about saying the right thing. She has 4 kids and I don’t want to be a bother. I’m afraid that because I’m a 1.5 hour drive away it will make things too difficult.
I know it’s from my trauma. But that doesn’t make the fear go away. I’m in therapy once per month. I wish I could talk to my therapist about it but money is tight right now. I want to feel grounded again. I feel like bringing up some things from childhood was good but also brought other emotions that were buried.