“Sisters: For me, there is no higher love.”

I don’t know what your relationship with your siblings is like. I can tell you that I hope sooner rather than later you can come to terms with the relationship you have with your brother or sisters.

There may be a chance that you are an only child. There may be a chance that you don’t even have a sister. I wish someone like that in your life (maybe a friend like a sister).

For me, my sister has been my pillar of strength and the example of what true friendship and unconditional love is all about.

I don’t know a higher love.

I used to have deep conversations with my father when I was a young teenager . He was not a man of faith nor did he believe in an afterlife. I asked him about it more.

He said, “as a parent, your afterlife is essentially the life you have created here because of the children you have brought into this world. If there is any value you have added to this world, it’s all directly because of the type of children that you have introduced to this world. The best legacy in life is how your children will improve the world that surrounds them.”

My father died when I was young. He taught me about loving people, but most importantly, he taught me about how to love my siblings. The bond that keeps us together is the strongest bond I know.

If you think about it for a second, your relationship with your sibling is the longest relationship you’ll have in your life. Your parents will die way before that. You met your spouse or partner much later in life than you knew your siblings. Your children were born much later than that.

I think that it matters so much that we love and cherish our siblings deeply. That we do what we can to keep those relationships nurtured and strong. When time comes that one of our parents is dying, it’s our siblings that we reach out to for support and guidance. No one else can comprehend the angst and drama of caring for an ailing parent or the sadness of the loss of one and then the other one.

We are left together. Grieving a loss only we know how deep and wide.

To have a strong relationship with a sibling truly anchors you. Like the roots of a substantial tree. They will have your back and you will have theirs.

My relationship with my sister is the deepest one I have even known. I am grateful for her and I am thankful my children get to observe that bond. It’s expected and not an anomaly. That is what we do. We love each other deeply and show up for one another 100 percent.

When she was having her two girls, I was with her in the delivery room both times. When I was giving birth to my kids years later, she flew both times from another state the same day and held my brand new babies.

That’s the connection I want in my life for my own two children.

On some level, we create our own stories.

My facts in life are that I have not lived in the same state as my sister for the past 25 years. I can count the number of days that I haven’t spoken to her on one hand. We create the love and connections that we want in our lives.

I choose to believe I am the extension of my father in this world. The love he wanted to create that still exists in this world today.

I hope you take a minute and take a deep look into the relationships you have with your brother and sister and examine if you could invite more love into that relationship.

For the good of yourself and those of your own children who are watching you closely.

With so much love and Aloha.