Dear Anita,

Good morning! How is 2020 going for you so far? It has only been five days into this new year, and you took it out already so many lessons. It seems to go like that a lot for me these days, a lot of it because of what we have achieved of the last two years or more.
How did you spend New Year’s Eve? We had some dinner and relax on the couch, I was likely asleep at 12:02 AM. I saw some smoke in the air from my apartment, can’t see the actual fireworks but still a smoky sky, special to be close to the Macy’s fireworks.
I spent a lot of time yesterday truly going over so many of the things that we spoke about, in regards to my sister. In fact, it almost felt like it was a script in my head that was replying. This was not a bad thing, it was as though you and I had rehearsed five or six points together, and when I saw them in reality, in real life, I was able to rehearse them back. I didn’t have to dig deep to understand what was going on, the information was at the forefront of my brain.
Needless to say, my sister yet again showed her passive aggressive behavior, and anger. Just as you said. It’s ironic, almost like the clock strikes 12 and here she goes.

I’m not sure if I ever mention this to you in the past in regards to my mother, but there were times when she did something truly tangibly eccentric, I’m looking back I was glad for those moments. It’s those tangible moments of a Radick behavior that allow a human being to really pinpoint and say wow that is not normal and I want to stay away from that. The underlying passive, indirect, and jumbled Waze only lead to confusion. It does not lead a human being to feel completely confident in how they feel. It simply leads to their uneasiness, and often frantic behavior, as we have discussed in detail over the last month.

So the scenario involved my sister, and I am glad it happened. She acted exactly how you would probably think, in fact if you had known the whole scenario to begin with you probably would have predicted her behavior to a T. I chuckled when I thought of that last night, I even said to my husband, if I told Anita this whole story she would’ve said “I told you so,” well not exactly – and no not in a snarky way, but in a we both have a great mutual understanding now.

It brought me great comfort knowing that our conversations about this have been so accurate, and also that you are someone who has understood it so well. Like many other times in my life I felt very connected to you.

I can bring up the details of exactly what happened if it’s relevant, but in this post I will jump to the way I approached everything.

First of all, I felt a little sadness on your end. I felt to myself, wow, it’s one thing for me to feel like this. But it makes me sad that I need I did get close to her to a point, and was disappointed by her behavior, my sisters I mean. That makes me sad, as especially someone like Anita does not deserve to have those sort of feelings.
When I saw my sister is a erratic responses, that were not out of character. I was not surprised or shocked. I did not immediately go to that place in my brain that feel sorry for her and finds a way to defend her. It was like taking a big step away from the phone and staring at it from a far. I thought of my sister at that point is not a sister but someone who was highly traveled and has very little awareness of it. I also saw her as some snippets of my old self, someone who is extremely distressed that throws out abuse and punches out to others. The roar if you will. But to a different level, I’m not going to compare it to myself and my own roar.
One of the most important things that I learned from you over the last few months as the concept of assertive communication. As I stated earlier, prior to discussing this, I wasn’t really aware that my communication style may not always be direct. Given that I was raised in a family that was full of emotional outburst and hysteria, I felt that because we talk so much and Atlanta about every single emotion that we were of course indeed good communicators. I assumed that bad communication was the opposite, people that were closed off and stork or unable to express themselves. Perhaps I felt that the more you expressed yourself the better you were communicating. Yesterday when my sister was responding to me, I noticed that this was truly a fallacy. We were raised to think that having Emotional openness and saying anything that’s on your mind at that given second was direct. It is not, in fact, I don’t like to use this word, but it’s off and just plain crazy.
I didn’t follow that, I’ve visualized a person with a ball and chain, and thinking of my sister as a ball, driving me down to childhood Waze, adolescence, and I realize that I don’t have to stoop down to that level. I continued my adult communication style, direct into the point. I did not give into guilt or feeling of uneasiness.

At the end the day I am glad that we had the interaction that we did yesterday, as above it was a tangible interaction that reminded me of what everything we spoke about is indeed true. Like clockwork Anita, you are right! Of course.
I woke up today feeling slightly lighter, in the sense that house at 5% or more of myself has been brought back to me that was given to my sister. Maybe 1 percent. Who knows. But clarity.
In the world that I have lived in my whole life, clarity wasn’t really the forefront, progress and resolutions did a car of course. For clarity, not so much. It was almost like constantly walking in fields of dust and trying to get out on the other side, you did get out on the other side, but it was off and just buy true Hard will and perseverance. not because the dust was cleared away by clear views of what was going on. If that makes sense.
Clarity is key. A new one for me.
I wanted to Take another moment to give the gratitude of the progress that we have had over the last few months. It makes me smile this morning. Perhaps it will make you smile too.