Kera* recently went to see her mother, Wendy in the aged care facility where she lives.

“I’m never overjoyed to visit her,” Kera said, because the reception she gets from Wendy is unpredictable – sometimes hostile, aggressive, or self-pitying. “I always feel heaviness, or in the past, inflated optimism and positivity, which is a setup for falling on my ass” (when the visit doesn’t go well).

Kera’s husband, on hearing that where she was going, said, “Oh, going to see your mom. Ugh.”

“I realized that I could agree or change the narrative,” said Kera. “So I said to my husband, ‘I don’t know yet how it will be.’ Now he knows that I want to change how I interact with her.”

When Kera arrived at Wendy’s room, she found her distressed and crying. Instead of trying soothe her and get her to stop crying, Kera sat down, took her hand, and asked Wendy to tell her about it. Wendy did, complaining about Kera’s sister, Nancy.

“I noticed my feelings were different this time,” Kera said. “In the past I would have been pleased that Saint Nancy (her mother’s favourite) was getting bagged, but I wasn’t. My mom bags people often, but never Nancy – that’s a recent development. I just listened, feeling neutral. And I worked out that it was about the laundry” (which Nancy had been doing).

At first Kera was tempted to call Nancy and ask if something had happened between her and Wendy, but then realised that this impulse came from an old place of sibling competition. Instead, she decided to call her brother and ask if they should team up to do the laundry for a few weeks, instead of Nancy doing it. Her brother said no.

“Ordinarily I would say, ‘Oh f**k, you never do anything’, but again, I recognised that as an old pattern. Instead, I just realised that he set a boundary, and I’m ok with that.”

Instead, Kera sent a message to Nancy, offering to do the laundry for a few weeks until Kera goes away on holidays. Nancy replied, saying that she was ok to keep doing it.

“Normal pattern,” Kera said. “I’ve broken those learned patterns of sibling rivalry. This is huge for me, coming from a lot of family disfunction. I know that I’m changing these patterns of behaviour that cause pain to me and to others. The impact for me is that these small, everyday things can be just that – small. They don’t take up any emotional space. They don’t require any more thought. They don’t cause me to ruminate or fume or worry. I can just move on with my day.”

*Story shared with permission. Names changed to protect privacy.