ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author uses autoethnography to analyze her deleterious relationship with her sister and their subsequent estrangement. Her sibling relationship was fraught with tension, jealousy, contempt, and animosity fueled by a toxic family secret. Using narrative memories as subjective fragments of awareness along with apprehended forms of familial knowledge including transcriptions of oral history interviews, a suicide note, and personal communication, the author traces familial patterns that sustained sibling bullying and family secret concealment. The author’s transgressive revelation of the secret of paternal deception becomes the impetus for her sister’s suicide.
