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Naming what society has historically NOT named – changing accepted cultural norms – challenging the fabric of what we have come to accept as ‘normal behaviour’ in families … none of that is simple.
BUT raising awareness – providing a platform for information, questions and learning – creating space for stories and conversations with people who have lived experience of what sibling abuse looks like … these are starting points.
That’s what we are doing at SiblingAbuse.ca.
With sibling abuse, as with other forms of trauma and abuse, we can lose connection … to others and to ourselves.
When those who are supposed to love and protect us are not doing so, we learn that shutting down and keeping others away is our only safety net.
And when we learn to shut down parts of ourselves in order to survive, we lose our connection to our whole Self.
At times, many trauma survivors feel unsafe, isolated, alone, unworthy, or unrooted, at least for periods of time. So later in life, even when we are safe, we may never feel that we are. We’ve lost connection.
But connection is fundamental to healing. With therapy and counselling, we are making important connections both to another and to our Self, and we highly encourage seeking help when one is struggling to understand and heal from abuse.
Connecting to others with similar lived experience is also powerful and healing. That’s one of our goals with SiblingAbuse.ca … to create connections.
I began this work when my childhood experience got its name – sibling abuse – and I knew deep down that I couldn’t be the only one who didn’t even know it was abuse. I found connection initially in a book, Sibling Abuse; Hidden Physical, Emotional and Sexual Trauma by Dr. Vernon Wiehe, which includes quotes from sibling abuse survivors obtained through a detailed questionnaire.
On dark days and nights, when I was starting to put the pieces together but still deeply troubled, I’d climb into bed with that book and read passages from it … I took great comfort in hearing the words of other survivors. For the first time, I felt that I had found ‘my people’. That I was not alone.
I hope this website, and the stories, experiences, conversations, solutions and wisdom that comes forward on our pages and projects, will do the same for others.
Please note that this is not a crisis information service, and that we are unable to provide crisis support.
If you need someone to talk to, please review our resources page for more information.
