I’m currently on a sleeper train headed to Beijing with my seventeen-year-old niece. Truth is, I don’t really know her. We’ve only spent two weeks together in her entire life, and those were with other family members.
Two years ago, I asked my sister if her daughter could travel with me. Her answer: yes, but only with a chaperone—her. I wasn’t angry. But I was hurt. Hurt that I wasn’t trusted with my then fifteen-year-old niece. Still, it ended up being a gift. That trip gave me something I’d never had: a relationship with my sister. I can’t even say it gave her back to me because we were never close, not even as kids. But on that trip, we talked. We connected. There were tears and laughter and promises to travel more. And we have.
This year, my niece flew solo to China to spend a month with me. I was deeply honored that my sister now trusts me enough to let her daughter travel to the other side of the world. And for a whole month!
Last night, while we talked on the train, my niece said something that stopped me cold. She told me her mom is afraid she’ll go home hating her after this trip.
I wasn’t sure how to respond.
I told her the truth: yes, there’s history between her mom and me. Bad blood. We’re siblings. That happens. But I would never try to damage the way she sees her mother. That relationship is sacred. I would be furious if someone did that to me with my daughters.
Still, as she sleeps beside me now, I find myself thinking. Remembering. Wondering.
In my memoir, I wrote that I didn’t see my siblings experience the physical abuse that I did. At least not early on, not with our father. My sister always seemed perfect, at least in our parents’ eyes. She could do no wrong. But maybe I was too wrapped in my own pain to see hers.
My niece refers to her mom’s “trauma.” She doesn’t say what it was, only that it shaped her. That it explains her anger and harshness. And I know what she’s talking about. It wasn’t the visible physical abuse of my father, it was the more damaging abuse, the kind that steals innocence. My sister told our mother about it years ago. When I first found out that she told her, I was angry. And if I’m being honest, I doubted her. I thought maybe she was using it for attention. And worse, I felt like if she shared her story, then I would be forced to share mine.
I had never told my story. I always said that telling my parents wouldn’t change what had happened. It would only cause them pain, and I had already endured enough of that pain on my own. My sister did tell them. And our abuser confessed—only because she came forward. But, I have a memory of the two of them, one that doesn’t match the narrative of force. In that moment, it looked mutual. But who am I to judge?
I’ve carried years of guilt and shame for not stopping what was done to me. For believing, at times, that the abuse was love. For mistaking attention—any attention—for affection. And I craved that attention so deeply, I let myself believe it was something I needed. Something I deserved. Today, I can see that was trauma speaking, its voice quiet and convincing, wrapped in confusion and longing.
And now I find myself wondering: is the fear my sister carries, that her daughter will come home hating her, because she thinks I might tell my truth? Or is it because our responses to trauma have been so different? My sister carries hers in anger and armor, in sharp edges and control. I’ve tried to carry mine in softness, in forgiveness, in the hope that I can break the cycle by refusing to pass on the damage.
Maybe all this time, we were both hurting. Both carrying pieces of the same shattered truth.
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