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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

PP here. My family history is nearly identical to yours (except my mom didn't become a pastor). What I will say with the benefit of hindsight is that setting boundaries is not so much hard as painful and scary. The actual act of setting them is fairly easy once you accept that you can't control the other person's reaction to them, and that they might get angry with you for doing so (which is only a reflection of their own poor emotional health).

The other thing I'll pass along, simply because everything you said is so eerily familiar, is that when I finally started to take care of myself w/r/t my family, I came to learn that my sister wasn't the ally I thought she was, and that was tremendously painful. She wasn't ready to separate herself from the drama and start really healing, and when I wasn't willing to continue going on that trip with her, she became extremely angry with me and lashed out. Hopefully your sister wouldn't react the same way, but it's worth being prepared for.[/quote]

Yup, that already happened once.  At points during this meltdown I've tried to push back against some of my sister's rage, both along the lines of sharing my less harsh perspective on some of my mother's behavior (there are certain things that my sister is just demonstratively factually incorrect about) and along the lines of saying that while I support her, I don't feel the need to cut my parents off (yet) as she was kinda pushing me to do too.  She freaked out and called me a traitor.  Later she apologized.

On some level I feel guilty because admist our dysfunctional childhood I was not a great big sis to her; I have apologized numerous times to her about this and she's pretty over it now.  But on some level I feel like now I'm trying to make up for it and protect her now.  But we're adults and there's really not a lot I can do.

-OP[/quote]

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