Navigating a Tricky Relationship with My Brother

I struggle to have as much empathy as he would like

Last night I received a text from my little brother saying, “Hey Kyra. Sometime in the next couple weeks can we get together and talk about our relationship?” I replied in the affirmative, but feel it’s incumbent on him to be proactive in pursuing this get together.

It’s the second time in our lives that he’s expressed wanting to spend one on one time together, and the previous time, about 8 years ago, never happened.

As you can guess, my brother and I have a tenuous relationship. He’s 17 years younger than I am (technically my half brother, though I’ve never called him such), and had a very different upbringing that I did. We share a dad, and while we both have felt the love and support, the father I grew up with was hungrier, more career-focused, more energetic but far less financially stable than the father he grew up with.

Despite the age differences, we had a warm relationship. Until recently.

When I was in my 20s and my brother was very young, I was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease, and autoimmune disorder that often left me sluggish, and in varying degrees of abdominal and intestinal pain. When I would visit my dad’s house, my elementary school-aged brother would want to…