I wrote about my sister and two brothers a few weeks back. If you missed this, you can read their story here:
@misslasvegas/the-care-system-broke-my-siblings-here-s-their-story-part-one-my-father-s-children
My parents were both married to someone else before they met. As a result, I have one brother and one sister who I grew up with and two brothers and one sister from my dad's first marriage.

This is the story of my sister - the one I grew up with. To protect her privacy, I changed her name for this. But I feel her story is an important one to be heard.

Source: Pixabay

Society's demands: It can and will harm the weakest

My sister and I have always been two peas in a pod. She is six years older than I am, and she wasn't always very happy having to drag me along everywhere she went, but she did so without ever letting me feel it that she didn't want me around. I still feel that we were once best friends, but sadly this has changed. Mainly I think because she will never understand the road I chose to take and I will never understand how she can let herself get manipulated and brainwashed by the system that once failed her so badly.

My mother had been married to my eldest brother's father for only 4 to 5 years.
Her husband was a drunk and he was physically and mentally abusing my mother and wouldn't allow her access to their money or anything else really. She didn't have much of a life and I'm sure my brother was affected by it too.
She made a very hard decision, but in my opinion it was the only right choice: She left her abusive husband, moved in with my grandparents and filed for divorce.
My brother is 16 years older than me, and in that time (he was only three years old), in the Catholic community where they lived in the South of the Netherlands, a divorce was not done, raising a child alone as a single parent - nearly impossible. Nevertheless, she did what she had to do and I have always admired her for this.
For my grandparents it was a different story. My grandfather ran a factory for flavours and fragrances, with several employees and the actions of my mother brought shame to him and the family. Bad for business.

Because my mother had always been independent, she managed to get a job in Germany, working in a hotel.
My brother stayed with her parents and they raised him as his own for the next 8 years.
Of course, my mother was visiting for longer periods of time, but she could barely make ends meet, let alone take care of a young child. Back in Holland, she met a man with his own set of issues.
He was mysterious, handsome and funny, but nothing was as it seemed. He was married, but separated. Or so he told her. She fell for him and his charm. That's about all I know about him as she never spoke of him, at least not to me.
And then it happened: she fell pregnant. Thinking that this time, things would be different, she was quite happy when she told him. Only, she didn't get the response she expected:
He didn't want to hear anything about a child and he and his wife had decided to give their marriage another shot.

The System and The Church

I think that experience is what destroyed my mothers last bit of trust in men and the human race in general.
The way I knew her, she was always distrusting everything and everyone.
My grandfather was very clear: He would support her as his daughter (she had moved back in with them) but he couldn't go through the shame of her having a child born out of wedlock after they had to deal with a divorce.
I have never known my grandfather as he died not long before I was born, and all I heard about him was that he was such a kind and loving man. But this had always made me wonder about him and I don't think I can ever understand how he could be so cold.

My mother had no choice: she was to go to a home for unwed mothers and because she was Catholic, the place was run by nuns. She carried her pregnancy till the end of it there, had my sister and left her while she tried to get back on her feet so she could take care of her herself. My sister was then moved to another group home, also run by the catholic church.

Once only did my mother tell me that story, as it was too hard for her to bring it up, so I never did.
She told me that she didn't hold my sister Joanne, that she couldn't. If she would have, she would have not been able to give her up. Being a mother myself and now that I know how biology works with mothers and their babies, I understand this all too well. My sister never did and still doesn't. To her, all my mother did was abandon her, but in my opinion, that is not true. She had no other choice. If she had, it would have all been different.
My mother was very clear to the nuns in that place: She would get back on her feet and return to get my sister.
You have to understand, nuns then would have joined for one of two reasons.
The first one would have been because they were devoted to their church and because they wanted to serve.
The second one was because their families either made them become a nun or because the only way to help their families in poverty was to leave.

The Church and their evil doings

Of course, the second kind of nuns would have had a huge number of women that hated to become what they had to.
These were usually horrible women. So imagine, an orphanage or group home run by nuns and at least one out of two is one with a horrible character. Evil is not the word.
And the other half (if it was even that), they could do nothing to make the lives of those children better without repercussions.
The nuns and workers in that place would have had their hands full and I don't think there would have been any time, nor the will to hold a crying baby, or help them to go to sleep or sing them a song.
None of that.
Even the ones that wanted to, weren't allowed.
Now, imagine being a small baby in that place. No family, just strangers who didn't want to know you, let alone comfort you when you cry.

Years ago, I've read an article in which they said that if a human child (and I believe most mamals, if not all) doesn't feel any (human) contact in the first two years of their lives, they die. Let that sink in for a moment: They DIE!!!
Well - my sister - she didn't die. At least not physically.
What it did do?

It completely fucked her up!

As I am writing this, I feel I can't continue this today. So I will leave it for now. But I will finish my sister's story and explain what I feel all this did to her and why. Her story has an ugly tail...She became an addict. Not the kind of addict that takes drugs, but an addict nevertheless.

For now, if you got this far, thank you for reading.