In this episode of Barely Famous, I’m sitting down with my sister Mikaila for the very first time on the podcast, and it’s the raw, complicated sister story that so many of you have asked for but also the one I wasn’t sure I was ready to tell. We talk about how she found out I even existed, the Facebook friend requests her mom made her delete, and how the adults in our lives couldn’t get their shit together enough for us to grow up as sisters. We revisit our very different experiences with our dad, what it meant to love someone who couldn’t love themselves well, and how his death and our own estrangement mirrored the same toxic patterns we swore we’d escape.

We also open up about why our last name was never really ours, the identity crisis we picked up along the way and the lifelong ache of trying to find somewhere and someone to belong to. Through all of it, there’s the instinctual love I felt the moment I truly met my niece and a promise to do better for our kids than anyone ever did for us. If you grew up in a complicated family, have “missing” relatives, or are trying to break cycles for the next generation, this one is for you. Grab a tissue.

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