u/premeditateddessert

My mom is my sister’s biggest enabler. I’ve been NC with my sister for 10 months for my own safety and my LO’s. But my relationship with my mom has quietly deteriorated during this time too, not because of anything I did, but because of what she’s chosen.

My toddler is small and sweet right now. That window won’t last. My mom is missing it. She stopped babysitting my LO but has been spending that freed up time at my sister’s instead. My dad steps up and watches my LO a few hours a week so I can work. My mom has seen my toddler maybe three times in 10 months, and only because I made it happen. She says she wants me to invite her to outings, but I work full time. My sister is a SAHM of two and can meet my mom at the aquarium or park on a random Tuesday. Right now my mom is at my sister’s for two days straight helping with the kids while they get housework done. My parents let my sister, her husband, kids, and dogs live in their own space for months while they sorted out a mold situation, and now my mom watches the kids or cleans and my dad does building work to improve the house, all for free, despite the abuse my sister puts them through.

So my LO doesn’t have a relationship with her nana. Which is exactly what my sister wanted and had multiple meltdowns demanding, even before my LO was born. My sister spent years projecting her own inferiority complex as the middle child onto my mom, insisting everything be made “equal” between our kids instead of going where the actual need was.

My husband says to stop making the effort. My dad admits it’s unfair but says my sister is the squeaky wheel and the easy fix for my mom in a toxic dynamic. My mom is a textbook victim in all of it. And I can’t really lean on my dad either. My sister has cut him off too, yet somehow still has him doing things for her. He won’t tell me what’s actually going on, I think to keep me from being upset at my mom, and to avoid feeding the NC situation that he and my mom both want resolved.

I don’t know what to do. If I bring this up to her, I’m scared she’ll spiral into guilt over the NC situation and try to fix it from that place, or avoid me even more because I represent everything that reminds her she’s failing at this. I love my mom so much. I idolized her. Now I barely recognize her, and that’s especially hard now that I’m a mother myself and need her more than I ever have.

To my other sisters out there, thank you. It helps to hear others, and I’m sorry that this has been our lives. Sending you all hugs.

Something that’s been really hard lately, and I haven’t fully processed, is that I see my sister whenever I smile. I never thought we looked alike until after I had my child. Between the stress of PP and the fallout with my sister, I lost some weight, and now I see her in every picture of me and in the mirror. When I smile. When I look at pictures of me with my little one. It’s a special kind of painful.

How do you all do it? For me, it’s just acknowledging the moment and trying to move through it. But it’s hard to fully move on when I catch her smiling back at me in my own reflection, the way she used to when she was happy. Or when I see my niblings in something my child does, and then I miss her all over again and think maybe I could just suck it up and try again. My parents keep saying she’s been doing so well lately. But what happens when it’s not? Shouldn’t sisters be there for each other when it’s hard? You know the spiral.

Update for those who followed my original post about my sister, undiagnosed but I’m nearly positive has BPD, and the fallout after I set boundaries. It’s been 10 months since she officially cut me off, specifically saying she didn’t want me around her children.

Some smaller updates first. I’ve only seen my niblings once since then. The oldest ran right up to me and I almost cried. My own child, still young, spent the whole gathering thrilled just to be near other kids their age. She sent a small toy for my child’s birthday, so I sent gifts for her kids too.

My medically complex brother developed seizures, fell at school, and sustained a TBI. He’s healed well, but the medication gives him shakes and behavioral changes that are wearing on my retired parents, who now care for him full time. That, combined with the ongoing stress from my sister and me, and her insistence that every moment with our mom be split equally between grandchildren, means my mom stopped watching my child altogether. She says she hasn’t seen my sister’s kids either. I’m not fully convinced. Either way, my mom has seen my child only a handful of times in 10 months, never once at her own initiation.

My dad, though, has really stepped up. He shows up every week for me, my husband, and our child. My mom and I have both said it’s like he finally gets to be the father he wanted to be, just one generation later. Watching that relationship grow has been an unexpected gift out of all of this.

My husband and I have grown closer too, and closer with his parents, especially my MIL. We recently took her on a mini beach getaway to say thank you for always being there for us. We’re lucky in the support we have. But I still find myself mourning the women in my life, and the future we used to talk about for our kids.

My mom keeps pushing for reconciliation. In our last conversation, I finally said the truest thing I’ve got: I still love my sister. I miss the best parts of her and the future we imagined. I’ll always love her, and I’ll be cordial when we’re in the same room. But I will never be able to trust her again. This isn’t about one incident, it’s a lifetime of instability, good periods only when she wasn’t stressed and got what she wanted. She pushed for therapy, still not understanding. I said I’d be open to it eventually, but only after the boundary holds first.

And then, right as I was writing this update, I got an email from her.

Subject line: “For You.” My anxiety spiked the second I saw the notification. I didn’t read it. I don’t plan to. My husband was next to me when it came in and saw me gasp, so I asked him to read it and give me the short version.

It was around 30 paragraphs. She opened by saying she wasn’t going to send it, that she’d written it just to share her perspective because she felt I never wanted to hear it. Then her version of our life story, with our dad and me as the villains.

A few of the lines, paraphrased by my husband:

\- That I made the family think she’s unsafe around kids. (I never said that. I said I don’t feel safe when she speaks and acts in ways that are emotionally abusive. If anything, it’s how she’s engaged with our brother around her own kids that’s made the family uneasy. He’s scared of her and of being around them.)
\- That I abandoned her at her lowest. (She was likely battling PPD, but never sought help, and it’s not my job to be her outlet the way it’s become my mom’s. This also wasn’t the first “lowest.”
\- That I cut her off over one incident. (It was a lifetime of these.)
\- That I walked away from my niblings. (I said repeatedly I wanted to stay in their lives. She’s the one who cut contact.)
\- That I never wanted to hear her side. (I have, many times. Nothing would have justified how she acted that time either.)

Throughout, she leaned on therapy-speak to talk down to me. She called it an “injustice” that I’ve let our dad back into my life but not her. She said I’m teaching my child to be unforgiving and unaccepting. She even dragged my child into it directly, at one point asking what I’ll do when my child disappoints me someday. My child could make choices I don’t agree with. That’s not the same as being disappointed in who they are, and I don’t think she actually believes it is either. It felt like a low blow more than a real question.

I’m glad my husband read it first so those words weren’t sitting behind my eyes all day. He softened the vitriol and reminded me, in a voice I trust, why the boundary exists and where reality lives versus where her version of it begins.

Mostly I just feel sad. Some part of me hoped time, therapy, or balanced hormones would eventually change things. History says otherwise. She holds onto what’s hurt her as identity instead of looking at her own part in it.

I don’t think I’ll respond. If I ever do, it’ll be a long way off. For now I’m staying focused on my nuclear family, the people who show up for us, and the family we’ve found along the way.

Sharing in case anyone else is navigating something similar with a BPD family member.

**Links to previous posts:**

\- Original post: [https://www.reddit.com/r/AITAH/s/wpuguUDJKd\](https://www.reddit.com/r/AITAH/s/wpuguUDJKd)
\- First update: [https://www.reddit.com/r/AITAH/s/4IrYTEGexz\](https://www.reddit.com/r/AITAH/s/4IrYTEGexz)
\- Second update: [https://www.reddit.com/r/AITAH/s/MOAjyODfP2\](https://www.reddit.com/r/AITAH/s/MOAjyODfP2) (removed by mods)