Content Warning

The following account contains deeply personal reflections on childhood trauma, including the loss of an infant, grooming, parentification, and psychological abuse. Reader discretion is advised.

(1978–1979)

My grandparents were the ones who told me I was the “ever-loving, ever-doting” big sister. They were the ones who painted the picture of the devoted child who adored her siblings. I wish I could remember that. I really do. But when I look back at those years, I see a blackout. I see a survival bunker.

My parents never called me that. In our house, we never spoke about my role, and to this day, we still don’t. It’s a weird, heavy silence. I realize now that my grandparents probably used that label to soothe themselves—to believe that we were “okay” because I was so “devoted.” But for my parents, that “doting” was just expected. It was the silent labor of an eight-year-old that allowed them to keep chasing their “fun” without a second thought.

By eight years old, I was already a ghost-written adult. I wasn’t just “helping.” I was taking care of the house. I was raising my siblings. I was even balancing the checkbook. While other children were learning to navigate playgrounds, I was navigating the family’s survival, managing the math of their existence so they didn’t have to. I was a child-sized pillar holding up a house made of cards, and because I was so “competent,” the adults felt entitled to leave their posts.

It was a house of revolving doors and erased identities. I don’t even remember all the boyfriends and girlfriends that cycled through; I just remember the instability they left in their wake. My father denied my brother Mickey was his own son, weaponizing paternity against a child to settle scores with my mother. I was told he even forced the end of another unborn life—a sibling I would never meet. In a world where the adults were constantly deleting people to preserve their own narratives, I was the only one trying to keep the ledger balanced.

I was eight years old when the silence finally broke into a scream.

I found my brother Jonathan in his crib at my grandmother’s house. He was only three months old and he was bluer than blue. I refused to believe he was gone; I stayed with him, holding onto him so tightly that they eventually had to physically pull me away from his body because I wouldn’t let go. I was a child trying to breathe life back into a ghost.

And how did they reward me for that? My grandmother, the same one who called me “doting,” stole the moment of discovery for herself. She told the world she was the one who found him, and she called me a liar to my face. To this day, I cannot look at those horrible latex dolls without seeing that “blue” stillness.

Then came the ultimate cruelty from my parents. They told me it was my fault. They told me I “allowed” that man next door to touch me, and that God was punishing me by taking my baby brother. They took my violation and my grief and twisted them into a divine execution. They took a girl who was responsible enough to manage their finances and told her she was responsible for a death she could not prevent.

My mother, obsessed with the movie Arsenic and Old Lace, even claimed she “dreamed” he would die. To this day, I ask myself: Did she do it? She never speaks of him. He is buried in Sussex, and in all these years, my parents never visited him. Not once. We lived right down the road from the cemetery. They could have walked there. They could have seen him every day. But they never did. Only I did.

They didn’t go because they couldn’t look at that grave and keep the “veneer” intact. If I was truly that “doting sister” my grandparents talked about, then it was that love that led me to stand by his grave when the people who brought him into this world refused to even acknowledge he was gone.

The Lesson: Reclaiming the Colors

For decades, the “Doting Sister” was a script written for me—a mask of devotion used to hide the exhaustion of a child who was forced to be an adult. I spent years in that survival bunker, keeping the books balanced and the veneer intact, while carrying a “blue” grief that wasn’t mine to solve.

But the silence is no longer a scream; it is a choice.

I realize now that the competence they exploited—the ability to manage, to create, and to hold space for others—is actually my power, not their resource. I am no longer the girl balancing a checkbook to fund someone else’s “fun.” I am the woman who balances her own world.

The “blackout” has begun to lift, and in its place, I am choosing my own palette. I’ve traded the gray silence of Sussex for the vibrant teals and berries of a life lived out loud. I’ve stopped trying to breathe life into ghosts and started breathing it into myself.

The ultimate lesson wasn’t that I was “responsible” for a tragedy; it was that I was resilient enough to survive a system designed to break me. I stood by that grave when they couldn’t because I was the only one with the courage to face the truth. Today, that same courage allows me to walk away from their “veneer” and live a life that is—finally—Vividly Rae.

I am not the script they wrote. I am the author of the chapters yet to come.

From the Bunker to the Light:

My journey Vividly Rae isn’t just a change; it’s a reclamation of my own narrative. If you are currently navigating your own “survival bunker,” know that the silence eventually breaks—and you get to choose what you say when it does.