Growing up, honestly, I felt alone.
My parents were always working and
my older brother didn’t know
how to play the role I needed him to.
Maybe it’s because he was trying to figure out how to grow up himself, too.
By the time I grew to be an adult, I realized no one could fit the mold of the person
I truly needed to look up to when I was younger.
The truth is,
no one really knows how to be
an older sister or brother for another person.
It either happens, or it just doesn’t.
When I realized how much I craved having an older sibling-like figure,
the more I wanted to become that person.
I became observant of the way kids are, what they need,
and how to interact in a way that would be
the most empowering to their growth.
Kids are just kids.
They are the most impressionable and the most vulnerable.
I learned to be careful in my interactions
and to understand my power within those interactions.
I learned to become the person I needed.
I don’t have any younger siblings, so by blood, I am not technically an older sister to anyone.
But the community of individuals I have become an older sister to,
gives me reason to believe that no one should have to feel the way I used to feel,
regardless of blood.
No one should have to crave the type of relationship
I wanted so desperately to have during my childhood.
We can be those individuals for others.
We can be the older siblings we didn’t have.
Kids are just kids.
Understanding how the world works, how other people work,
how every interaction feels so significant—
it is all so new to them.
Our words have power.
Our interactions with kids can mean the world to them.
When you truly think about how your interactions could mean something
to someone so impressionable and vulnerable,
you can decide to be the person
who is caring, who can listen, who can understand
how it feels to be so little, to be curious about every little thing,
to hurt in a way that cuts so deeply because they haven’t yet learned
what it means to have thick skin.
You can become the older sibling
you desperately needed when you were younger.
If you decide to be that person for others,
to become the person you needed,
the inner kid inside of you
might finally have a reason
to not feel so alone anymore.