An Exercise In Humility.

Since having reconnected with my adoptive brother, we've been emailing back and forth several times a day, and the conversation ranges over a wide landscape. I've missed my brother's humour, it was always a delight, and we share a sense of irony.

It's an exercise in humility, reconnecting with my brother, because he thinks of me as I was before Al-Anon; that's how long we've been estranged. So he's talking to that person, and I can feel his confusion when it isn't that person who replies. In one email, he asked what I thought about how some people behave - this would have been an opening to a ranting diatribe of snarky humour on my part, all those years ago. This time, I replied mildly that I'd given up thinking that I knew best how the world should be run.

Because we were so close for many years, our reconnection was immediate, and the comfort is still there for both of us, but I think he's having a hard time wresting his mind around to the massive changes in my ways of thinking. He's writing to the person that I was, and it's the woman I've become who's writing back.

I was a furiously opinionated, sarcastic, self-centred, judgemental person when he last knew me. I get the feeling from his emails that he might be finding it rather astonishing to have the woman he thinks is still that person reply to his question soliciting my "opinion," with the statement "I try hard not to have "opinions;" they interfere with my efforts to achieve humility."

He's poking at me a bit now, with his questions and his teasing, and I can watch it happening - where is the person he remembers as his sister? Long gone to past history, thank God, and thank Al-Anon. I know we'll find our way to a peaceful relationship, once he realises and understands who I've become - he is an "old soul" with a kind and loving heart. I'm so grateful to have been granted the chance to make my amend to him, and to be able to answer all of his questions, and ask my own of him.

Love is a gift. I've been blessed in my life,