My family is not what one would call close knit. We’re all kinda close with someone, but no one’s that close with everyone, and who’s close to whom has evolved over the decades depending on life circumstances and current events, resulting in a bunch of different knits with varying tightness of weave. Which I assume is normal, or at least runs in the family. I remember spending holidays in Chetek on my grandparent’s farm with my cousins, until one year we didn’t. Our families never saw much of each other after that. We didn’t ask questions, or if we did, I can’t remember, and no one offered explanation, but if they did, I can’t remember. Anyway, it’s safe to assume we’re not the plot of the next Hallmark Christmas.

No judgement here. Navigating adult relationships with family, especially siblings, is a wild ride. Bonus bumps for the age gaps. Tonya (Child #1), refers to her days in our family home(s) as her Tonya & The Kids era, nine years separating her from Tessa (#4), with whom I (#3) shared a bed until middle school. Sean (#2) was the only boy. We put him in the basement.

We all technically grew up together, but under ever-changing roofs with different parental versions; each childhood filled with memories tailored to our unique timelines. Experiencing the same event at 6 and 15 is not experiencing the same event. Different perspectives with different take-aways stemming from our individual interpretation of life based solely on who we were at that time. We share biological parents, yet we were raised by different people because over time, adults change too. And we all lived in Mom & Dad’s world, primarily on their timeline, unlike many families where kid schedules rule the adult time block shuffle.

And much like other totally normal families, we didn’t make it to our 40s without the occasional multi-year freeze-out, petty feuds and smack talk, saving the real fireworks for the holidays. Which was pretty much the only time we all got together, and even then someone was always missing. I’ve been personally kicked out of more than one Kowalski household during more than one Thanksgiving. But hey, if you’re not a member of the Kicked Out Kowalski Club, are we even related?

Last Thanksgiving was a different kind of special. My sisters and I had what you could only describe as a full blown sibling exorcism. We exposed every single tiny morsel of a nugget ever swept under the rug, addressed it in the way one should when you’re starving but don’t know if it’s still edible or poison. We took turns slamming doors, running outside to take a beat, clapping with gratitude and encouragement when someone came back inside, because YESSSS! WE WERE DOING THIS. We screamed everything we needed to scream, heaved the heaviness out, hugged in pairs, hugged in a group. 

And then we let it all go.

It was actually pretty beautiful, though I’m sure we looked like a terrifying hot mess from the outside looking in. But that’s okay, this kind of thing isn’t meant for outsiders. We held space for each other as we pulled out our demons one-by-one just to discover as with most sibling drama (and most beef in general), every anxiety, trouble, concern, insecurity or slight we’d been carrying around all this time was of course, not that big of a deal at all. Prolonged misunderstanding, stubbornness, ego, pride, burned up the bridges, put up walls in their absence. All those years of not talking about whatever it was, made a bunch of mountains out of molehills, and they just kept building. Building until they festered. Festered until BOOM!! It’s science.

One piece of context for this holiday exorcism, perhaps the impetus behind tackling our shit, Child #1 was mid-escape from one of those marriages in which everyone welcomes the end. My exact response: WOOHOO!! TONYA 2.0!!!! It’s pretty special to navigate this world, just you, nobody whispering in your ear about how life should or should not be, what’s good, bad. You get to decide. We were all on our own healing journey in some way, and it was time to collide.

My siblings and I are not the same. Tonya is a 9, Tessa a 6, I’m a 7. That’s on the Enneagram, not the hotness scale. I don’t know about Sean, someone should check on him in the basement, maybe I’ll send him a pre-paid link to 145 questions for Christmas, that’s how presents work, right? Anyway, my point is, I’m not sure any of us would have naturally found our way into friendship with each other if we lived on the same street without family ties. All of my siblings are fascinating, I am fortunate to call them mine, but our Venn diagram of life over time is quite small. 

What we do have in common is each other, battle tested under the same(ish) roof(s). No one else has our parents. No one else has us as siblings. A unique familial cocktail only we get to experience, and that’s not nothing. But shared DNA doesn’t mean we know everything there is to know about each other. It doesn’t preprogram us to like each other, and it certainly doesn’t mean we automatically love each other. I don’t think we knew what love even was growing up, but as an adult I’ve learned it’s not an obligation. We entered this world from the same portal (oh my gods, women are fucking magical witches) then fate shot us in wildly different directions. We all went on to live separate lives none of us knew anything about, not really. And we had spent so very little time trying to learn. 

If we wanted to know each other, who we are today, not who we were based on pre-existing childhood notions, outdated assumptions filled in by family chirps, if we wanted a real relationship, it would have to be intentional. An actual effort, not just happenstance of living under the same(ish) roof(s).

Some time ago my dad and I were agreeing to disagree about any number of things when he said something to the effect of “well tosh, you’ll always be my little girl.” It was an unusual thing for him to say (he’s not the sentimental type), but it struck me as an interesting thing for anyone to say ever, even in the movies. Sweet in theory, the main problem with always being someone’s little girl is they fail to see the 40 years of woman you’ve become. But that’s the funny thing with families, isn’t it. We don’t really allow each other to grow.

After we hugged it out last Thanksgiving, my sisters looked different. Or at least I saw them differently. Two familiar strangers with this wow undertone, you’ve always been there, but I never got to appreciate you. It was physically, emotionally, verbally expressed and genuinely felt. We can begin now. This is where we start from. 

And giving someone entirely different from you the proper runway it takes to truly understand and love and respect each other…that’s everything there is to know about anything.

Gobble, gobble. ❤