Monday, January 24, 2011

Hope

My sister-in-law just texted me to say that she has bought my brother his plane ticket to come visit me the last weekend in February. I am afraid to believe it will actually happen, but I want it with all I've got. I haven't seen him since December of 2009, and in the meantime he's had some life-changing events, including going to Afghanistan to manage the medical staff at Camp Leatherneck. It sucked to see his name in press releases all over the place and not be able to tell him that I was proud. So much since May has sucked.

It would be great if we can work together to rebuild our relationship. I know that he is worried that I am still angry with him and that my family won't accept him. He doesn't know me well enough to trust that I love him no matter what, or that my family believes in forgiveness. I want to change that, but first he has to believe in us. Our upbringings were very different, so despite our being similar in many ways, we work from expectations and foundations that aren't necessarily the same.

Sometimes it's hard to be patient and accept that I don't have control over anything except myself.

I will try not to think about this too much. Yeah, right.

4 comments:

Real Daughter said...

Yay!!! Im so happy T sent you a text!!

I have high hopes for your relationship with A, I really do.

Adoptee said...

I can SO relate.

Brothers. Seriously. That's all I can say about it right now: Brothers (add a sigh for effect).

Bleh! It's hard to build relationships. Everyone has to be 100% committed to it. My family is like... 14% committed and the rest falls on me. Boo.

I am not feeling very articulate, lol. I'm just trying to say.... I relate!!!

Trish said...

This is very exciting. While I have no experience with this particular brand of relationship building, I hear you on the point of coming from differing foundations and expectations. I find sustaining a relationship with our daughter's bmom difficult for the same reason. Her base has been one of rejection, of not being good enough, and feeling undeserving. After 2.7 years, I don't think she really believes that we love her and respect her as a parent of our shared child. She wants to believe it, but her paradigm just won't allow it.

All good thoughts to you and your bro.

Jenn said...

Yay!!! I don't have any brothers so I know nothing about them, but hopefully things will work out wonderfully :-)