Suffering the loss of a parent is always unsettling and a difficult thing to go through.

But when it happens as a child, the loss can be truly traumatic.

Of course, everyone deals with grief in their own ways – and the same can be said of trauma too.

But almost two decades after their loss, the two sisters in this story are more divided in grief than ever, and it is starting to seem like nothing will change.

Read on to find out what happened between them to make things this way.

AITA for letting our different relationships with our stepmom come between me and my sister?

My sister (19, female) and I (21, female) lost our mom when we were aged five and seven. Our dad remarried eighteen months later, and from day one our relationship with her has been different.

My sister loved her almost immediately and started calling her mom soon after they got married. I never felt very strongly about her and never called her mom or my parent.

She was always “Susan” to me, and Susan was not the woman I would call my primary maternal figure either – that was my maternal grandma.

My sister and I were close as little kids, when mom was alive and up until dad introduced us to Susan. We never could understand each other though.

Let’s see how this new family dynamic started getting between these two sisters.

I could never understand her calling Susan mom or being excited to “have a mom again,” because to me I still had a mom – just not a mom who could be here.

I didn’t think it was a good thing for someone to come in and fill mom’s role. I believed we were good with just the three of us.

When my sister wanted to be adopted and wanted to have mom-daughter necklaces with Susan it was so weird to me and I wanted no part of it for myself.

I could accept that we were different and wanted different things and I never tried to shame or step my sister from doing what she wanted. But to me it was weird then and even now it’s just not something I could ever imagine myself wanting or doing.

But for her sister, things were very different.

My sister on the other hand could never understand Susan staying Susan for me. She could never understand me not running to her when I was sick, hurt, etc.

When we were younger and Susan was home more than dad, my sister would tell me to “ask mom for help” or she’d say I needed to tell “mom” I was sick and needed cuddling. Usually I waited for dad, or I would call grandma and she’d drop her soup over and cuddle me for a bit.

My sister didn’t understand my reluctance to make Mother’s Day about Susan. She used to try to write a “mom” card for Susan from both of us. When I did a report on mom for school, my sister was very confused over me picking mom instead of Susan who was there for me to ask questions of.

Whenever I call dad and Susan “my sister’s parents” she’d give me real side eye. Actually, one time she asked me what that was about and I told her she always hates me saying “my dad and his wife” so I decided to use “her parents” because she sees them both as her parents.

All of this had a real knock-on effect for their relationship, which deepened over the years.

This stuff all got awkward between us, and we weren’t as close as before. The older we got and the more set in how we saw Susan, the more we grew apart.

It got worse when I moved out and didn’t suddenly miss Susan and run to her for motherly stuff. She was still Susan, and still not someone I loved or cared about deeply.

My sister told me I was weird about six months after I moved out, and at the time she wouldn’t tell me why.

But it all came up a few days ago, and she told me she blamed me for us drifting apart.

Let’s see how she pinned the decline in their relationship on her older sister.

She said she knew I never understood it, and that a part of me hated her loving Susan and calling her mom. She wanted me to fight for her and us as sisters and to understand.

I told her I knew she didn’t understand my feelings either. I said it wasn’t just me who found it weird.

She told me her way made sense and mine didn’t. I told her both points could be argued and dissected but ultimately we could each feel how we want.

She said that wasn’t true because how I feel is disrespectful to Susan and cruel overall.

But this sister refused to be drawn into the argument.

I told her I wasn’t going to argue with her.

She asked me what I would argue – if I would I accuse her of being disrespectful to mom, because that would be unfair.

I told her I wasn’t arguing, but she said we were only arguing and distant because I let our relationships with Susan come between us in the first place.

She texted me the next day and wanted to know if I felt bad yet. I didn’t reply, and she hasn’t either.

AITA?

It’s sad that their different feelings towards Susan have dragged these sisters apart so much, and it’s clear that these sisters never got the grief counselling they deserved – and desperately needed.

Their different approaches make a lot of sense: given their different ages when their mom passed, these sisters were at very different stages in their brain development.

The younger sister wasn’t old enough to really comprehend, on a higher level, what was happening, and was young enough to just want her needs fulfilled – she found that in Susan and was happy, with the loss of her mom covered up.

The older sister, meanwhile, had some semblance of emotional maturity at seven years old, and felt the loss much more strongly, refusing to suppress it. Before she was forced to move on, she needed support. In that, her dad and stepmom failed her.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit had to say about this.

This person agreed that both sisters needed counselling, and it was a travesty that they didn’t get it.

Meanwhile, others pointed out that the real problem wasn’t Susan – it was the younger sister who was forcing her older sister to be like her.

And this Redditor thought that the older sister should absolve herself of all guilt about this.

What these sisters have been through is so deeply traumatic that only with a lot of work could they truly unpick their own attitudes toward Susan – and to one another.

Both of them are clearly keen to still honor their mom, but in different ways, and it’s getting between them – even though there’s no real need for it to.

But in trying to force her older sister to feel the same, the younger sister is destroying any relationship that they could have, and likely forcing the older sister further away from Susan, all because her perspective on this is completely flawed.

She’s wrong to do that. Her sister in an individual, and gets to make her own choices.

If you liked this post, you might want to read this story about a teacher who taught the school’s administration a lesson after they made a sick kid take a final exam.