
My name is Ali-John Chaudhary, and like you, I’ve experienced sibling estrangement.
The human condition has always interested me. And it’s what shaped me into becoming a psychotherapist. While younger, I was often the black sheep within my family, and at school. I was able to turn my life around, and cease to become a victim when I became an adult, studied, empowered myself, and started to help others. I found out I wasn’t alone. The more I practiced therapy, the more I found others who had issues with estrangement too. In fact, 1 person out of 3 doesn’t get along with their sibling. Maybe you fit in that category too. It’s my hope that this website and my Youtube videos help to empower you further, such that you can think and feel better about you, and the situation.
People sometimes wonder what drew me to experience estrangement with my sister.
First, we basically lived parallel lives in our family home. My late mother came from a large family, and wanted for each of us to have our individual lives. Something she didn’t get as much of herself, having to take care of younger members in her family.
I often felt a sense of an uneven view of who I was within the family. I wish I could say that my Mom and Dad didn’t foster the Golden Child/Black Sheep dynamic early on between my sister and I, as this led to a negative view of who I was within the family.
Since a young age, I always felt my sister didn’t show much interest in who I was. I wished she would have interacted with me more instead of staying in her room. Fast forward into our young adult years, it saddened me that my sister would turn down opportunities to speak with me when she phoned home from college, as she felt more and more like a stranger to me. On the rare times we would try to talk with one another, the same chemistry from childhood would invariably cause defenses to arise and criticisms to occur.
As our adult lives progressed, various examples of marginalization occurred at particular key social and life events, causing sadness and dismay as to why she was treating me this way. Eventually, I had to come to accept that this relationship would never be fully developed nor expressed.
This tumultuous low contact superficial relationship still continues to this day. Only because I initiate phone calls and inquire about her children. If I didn’t do any of these things, I fear I would not hear back from her for months at a time, as the past has shown me. This is why I decided to break out of my silence and suffering and speak up on this particular subject. Together, we can continue to empower ourselves, and find strategies to walk together on this path, such that we can break free of the weight of estrangement and toxic behaviors, and inspire ourselves to bigger and greater things, apart from what our siblings think of us.