Brother/Sister puzzle

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Hi everybody,

I'm dxd A.S. and my sister has some shadow traits of A.S. (as does my mother) but my own difficulties led to a social incapacity and severe exclusion that was only resolved when I was dxd A.S. in my 30's. Diagnosis gave me a chance to return to education but this time knowing how and where I could cope, which has led to my having a semi-professional practice as a graduate artist.

Recently though my sister has been saying how she envies my life so much and feels oppressed by her husband's family who are strangely religious (though he is not especially religious himself). I encouraged her with her food photography and I tracked down excellent equipment and even a food photography course that gave her more confidence. Yet it just seems that the more she expands her health food and food photography business (which is doing really well) then the more she says that she wants to be like me.

Therefore I am asking how I might persuade her that she does not have to be somebody else to be happy, that she needs to see that she is worthwhile as who she is? Since I was dxd 19 years ago I have accepted what might be called 'spectrum culture' and I have included it in aspects of my writing and art and I wonder now whether she feels left behind, given that she lives in a middle class English way where she has to keep up appearances with just about everyone in the neighbourhood. Also my sister has reached that 'Time of Life' (as it is called) when women re-evaluate where they are and how they got here. My sister had a lots of success in her first career and has children and cars and a big old house etc.

It puzzles me then. I don't go out and I'm single and don't socialise in any regular way and don't have a great deal of money and my plans regularly get demolished by my melt-downs, anxiety etc, then why should she envy my life over hers? I'm not trying to put myself down or anything like that. I began art and stories when I was a child and I have simply kept going for decades and I'm happy that it led somewhere eventually. My sister seemed to succeed instantly and perhaps that became a gap between us.

Any perspective on this would be welcome. Thank you.

Perhaps your sister is tired of having to keep up appearances and feels that she is putting on her own type of mask in order to keep everything going right or to keep everyone happy. Perhaps she thinks you are more "free" to be yourself because you can't hide your disability and everything is just kind-of out there for everyone to see. Maybe she feels that is she "is herself", her world might come crashing down. You have built a life around what works for you. Perhaps she has built her life around what works for other people.

Thanks Nerdygirl, that just about sums up the problem.

You see I don't want to be seen to be interfering. When she calls for a chat about it
she talks about the grim religious furniture that seems to arrive from in-laws with every Will
but they are people she's never known well and there are also large shrines of framed pictures
to other people that are finding their way onto walls and my sister is too polite to stand her ground
and refuse them, and she says that one side of the house is beginning to look like a funeral
parlour. I don't want to sound like I am bashing spirituality, it's just that my sister's is an old
house and some rooms are gloomy and she tried to brighten them up.

Maybe my best approach is simply to listen to her many plans about getting rid
of the shrines and the Addams family sideboards.

I suppose things will reach a crisis point and there will be a huge falling out. People
often have to move house and move a long way to find themselves again. I would
not mind so much if my sister moved a long way from here as long as she
was happy.

- Cloudyday.

aha, while living in a big old house too, all s**t rolls to you somehow, dead people's stuff stripped of any things of interest would be brought here, luckily SIL and BIL who were charged with the transport did burn most of it before doing so!

i found earlier in life, but thats may be just a feeling, that family furniture bring a nasty heavy vibe with it,
burn that s**t!! or throw it out anyway!

You speak much wisdom Traven,

I remember my mother saying that when she was young she had a bedroom in my grandparents' house that was down a corridor with no windows in it. Anyway she said that in the patterns in a wardrobe's wooden door, I mean in the lines of the wood, she could see a pattern that looked like a face. My mother said it used scare her to pieces and yet when she had my grandmother and grandfather look at the door they could not make a face out of the pattern at all. Only she had that particular way of looking to see it.

Old furniture can be really good sometimes. I think grandfather clocks are sort of friendly. But sometimes old furniture can be so creepy. Perhaps my sister could turn her problem into a ghost story or something. Haunted furniture? I might suggest that to her.

- Cloudyday.