Reese Brown (01:41.784)

Annie, thank you so much for joining me this morning. I am so looking forward to this conversation. I am a sibling myself, and so I deeply enjoyed your book, Always a Sibling. So thank you so much for being here today.

Annie Orenstein (02:02.926)

Thank you, thank you for reading it and for having me on.

Reese Brown (02:06.808)

Absolutely. Well, I'm going to kick things off with the same question I always do just to set the tone for our podcast. And that is what is one thing you're grateful for right now.

Annie Orenstein (02:19.374)

Right now, I am very grateful for cousins. This is the first thing that comes to mind. When my oldest brother died, which I'm sure Abby Sue will talk about, growing up, I had a lot of cousins. They voiced stress, family functions. And when my brother died, I worried that that was gone.

Reese Brown (02:25.496)

Mmm.

Annie Orenstein (02:48.462)

the potential of that was gone. And my surviving brother has now has four kids and I have two kids and a lot of our other cousins have, you know, really gotten ever closer in our lives and their kids are our kids cousins. And this past weekend, my kids got to hang out with a bunch of their cousins and have a lot of fun.

looking at them and watching them made me very happy because it was something that I wasn't sure I was going to be able to give them. And so this morning I woke up feeling especially thankful for that.

Reese Brown (03:30.776)

Hmm, that's beautiful. There is something really unique about family connection. And I'm a big believer in chosen family and that you choose your blood family the same way you can choose your non -biological family, right? And so that choice that you've made to give your kids that relationship is really special and unique. But let's dig in a little bit more to your story. The second question I always ask my guests

Annie Orenstein (03:40.654)

Mm -hmm.

Annie Orenstein (03:47.342)

Mm -hmm.

Reese Brown (04:00.504)

is. What is your story? I find that this is a really nice way to kind of crack open the conversation and I would just love to hear all about Annie.

Annie Orenstein (04:12.974)

Sure thing. So, actually, wait, can we pause for one second? I need to make my air conditioner colder. Just give me two seconds. Hold on, hold on, hold on. That way we don't have to interrupt the actual story. Okay.

Reese Brown (04:19.192)

Absolutely.

Okay, you're good. Do what you need to do.

Annie Orenstein (04:37.134)

Okay.

Annie Orenstein (04:40.846)

That's how.

Now, now I can tell you the story without sliding.

Reese Brown (04:48.312)

Short, yes.

Annie Orenstein (04:51.022)

All right, so my story. So I grew up with two older brothers and two parents and a very, I would say like a very leave it to beaver type of growing up, right? My brothers and I were very close. My parents, you know, had a very

still do, but a very beautiful marriage, you know, always clearly in love and happy. And I will say at one point, like maybe around middle school, I started to think like this can't be real forever. As you know, friends, parents started to get divorced and I started to...

learn more about the realities of the world and be a little less sheltered, my little leave it to be worse situation felt like, you know, I think I started to feel like I was waiting for the shoe to drop. Like nothing is this easy, this good, this whatever. And there was a lot of catastrophizing on my side.

That's what a therapist taught me.

Reese Brown (06:20.664)

yes, we are familiar with catastrophizing over here.

Annie Orenstein (06:25.646)

like there's a name. But it really was a beautiful childhood and growing up. And in 1999, I want to say with 1999 or early 2000, my eldest brother joined the Army Reserves when he was going back to school for grad school. And he

was always very into government policy, international affairs. That's what he was going to school for. And he felt like, you know, the military had access to all of these things that civilian organizations didn't. And his, his theory was if he wanted to go out and help and provide international aid and support and all of this stuff, well, the military is a perfect vehicle for that. They have tons of resources and funds and money and

Reese Brown (07:24.728)

Right.

Annie Orenstein (07:24.846)

All of that. Then 9 -11 happened and he was in the reserves and we all panicked, you know, what is about to happen. And things were pretty calm for a while. He was deployed for the first time in 2006. And at that point he was deployed to the Horn of Africa. And it was very much what he thought he would be able to do with the military. They were...

bringing clean water to communities in Northern Uganda and the Sudanese border. And in fact, when he got home, he formed a nonprofit to continue that work. And it really felt like, this is it, like I'm using the military's resource to bring clean water to these communities. He was called up again on a stop loss order in 2009. And this time,

to Afghanistan. And what we've learned since then was I think it was not the same kind of experience that he had when he was deployed the first time. And he was deployed in July of 2009 and on October 2nd of 2009 when he was on foot patrol, they were out.

presumably to go meet a community leader. And instead they were met by a suicide bomber and he was killed instantly. And even though I had spent the last 10, 15 years thinking something bad is going to happen to our family, even though I was convinced that

he was not going to be okay. I was terrified that he was not going to come home. And yet, when it happened, I felt like this isn't right. This isn't what was supposed to happen. And it really, you know, shook all of us as it does for everyone. And

Annie Orenstein (09:51.022)

So that was almost 15 years ago, which is wild to imagine. I was 25 at the time. And there were no resources that felt specific to sibling loss. I have a very vivid memory of going into a huge bookstore in New York City and going to the grief section.

and looking for something that could help me. And there was nothing there. There were books on losing parents and spouses and children and pets. And there was nothing about siblings. And I took that to mean that my loss didn't matter. Siblings didn't need these resources because they weren't grieving. That I was being dramatic. I was the problem.

Reese Brown (10:43.0)

Mm.

Annie Orenstein (10:48.174)

And I really struggled with that. I mean, I struggled with the loss a lot. And I kind of continued on my path and became a professional researcher. I worked in the toy industry for a while and I worked in agencies for a while. And the last about six years I've been working in tech.

And I always just kind of kept doing my thing. And when we were approaching the 10 year anniversary of Ben's death, I wanted to do something. I wanted to capture the stories about him that I didn't know, because I was eight years younger than him. So there was, you know, he told me a lot. He was very open, but I knew I didn't know everything. And I wanted to collect.

those memories. And I wanted to have that kind of record of him. And over time, what started as this, you know, series of interviews with people who knew him to try to capture his story, it evolved into this book that is, you know, in many ways, I think the book that I needed when I was 25. And I was I was standing in that bookstore and

the book I needed again when I was 30 and then probably every year since then, you know, it's not, it's not only about that first initial loss. But that's really what it turned into. It went from being a project about Ben to a project informed by Ben in many ways and kind of a love letter to

sibling relationship and hopefully a source of support to other people who are in a similar place who aren't feeling seen or whose grief isn't being acknowledged.

Reese Brown (12:56.075)

I think that one of the most beautiful pieces that we see this reflected in the book is the subtitle, The Forgotten Mourners Guide, right? That you took this experience that you had of walking into this bookstore and feeling forgotten by the world of grief. And you were able to give a voice to that, to remember

all of the mourners so that they don't feel forgotten in the future. And I just have to remark on, you know, that that process of turning pain into purpose is something that is so integral to the human experience. So thank you for doing that. Would you concur that that is kind of what this has evolved into? That it is this pained purpose journey? Or how would you categorize that?

Annie Orenstein (13:50.03)

I do think so. I think it's...

Annie Orenstein (13:57.134)

I have, so my brother loved, he's a long way to say yes, but hopefully a beautiful one. My brother kept a lot of journals and he loved quotes, song lyrics, quotes, all of it. And he would, if he saw a good quote, he would just immediately write it down. And going through his stuff, I found a lot of these pieces of paper in his handwriting where he just wrote,

you know, a quote on it. And I have one that's framed, that's behind me, that says, if you don't like the way the world is, you change it. You have an obligation to change it. You just do it one step at a time.

And I think.

I didn't realize that's what I was doing because the project shifted kind of over time and I almost didn't, I don't think I really stopped to think about the purpose piece or the meaning piece so much. And I found that after I was already working on it and

And I realized that's what I was doing. And I think, I think that was very much always his ethos in life. And so I knew that that was something that would resonate with him. But I think it very much is, you know, I had this horrible, painful experience, you know, certainly the worst thing that's ever happened to me. And I saw something that was broken.

Reese Brown (15:19.8)

Hmm.

Annie Orenstein (15:46.798)

And there are very few things you can fix in the world of grief. You can't fix your grief. You can't fix someone else's grief. You can't bring your person back. You know, you can't. And for a long time, that's what I focused on was, you know, well, if I can't bring him back, then nothing else matters. Nothing's going to bring him back. So like, what's the point? And I think I somehow found myself

you know, over 10 years later, coming back to one thing that I could fix. And that did, I think, give me a lot of purpose and a lot of, it gave me a gift in a lot of ways, because the writing of the book helped in my own grief and it helped me process and it helped me, you know, move forward in a lot of ways where I had been stuck.

Reese Brown (16:45.08)

Hmm. That's really beautiful. And I think it leads perfectly into one of the topics that I wanted to discuss, which is, of course, the stages of grief that all of us pretty much have heard. It's very big in the zeitgeist and our kind of pop psychology. And Elizabeth Kubler -Ross, as you write in the book,

started research about these five stages of grief. And then I believe one of her students, David Kessler, introduced the sixth stage, which is finding meaning. And I remember I learned about that a little bit ago and I was like, what an interesting concept because of course the podcast is called Making Meaning. And for that to be tied into something like grief, I've really been reflecting on that a lot.

Annie Orenstein (17:19.534)

Mm -hmm.

Reese Brown (17:35.64)

Can you talk a little bit about this finding meaning piece of grief and how it has helped you with that process and why you think that that was added into this already established kind of system that we have for grief?

Annie Orenstein (17:55.054)

Yeah, I think, I will try not to go off too hard, but I think there are a lot of flaws in the five stages. They were originally developed as the five stages of like grieving your own death. Her research was with kind of death and dying and they weren't meant to be stages of grief or

Reese Brown (18:01.752)

Go off as hard as you want. This is the space for it.

Annie Orenstein (18:23.534)

for those of us who are mourning the loss of someone else. And I think it becomes kind of dangerous, honestly, I was trying to decide dangerous is too strong a word, but I don't think it is because what happens is a lot of people think they're doing it wrong. If they're not hitting those five stages in order and they're not making progress, then they think they're grieving wrong. And that's just not true.

Reese Brown (18:40.888)

you

Annie Orenstein (18:52.174)

there's no wrong way to grieve. There are a lot of different ways to grieve. And there's a whole chapter in the book where I go through the 15 commonly recognized forms of grief. And you can experience multiple, which means, you know, I'm out of practice with my math, but nearly infinite possibility of combinations of types of grief you can experience at the same time in sequence, you know, all of this. And so I think the stages are

are can be very harmful for some people because they end up holding themselves and others to an unrealistic standard or expectation. That said, I do agree that finding meaning is a really important piece of this. And I think what it comes down to, you know, I initially was very

resistant to that idea because there is nothing that could get me angry or get my blood pressure up faster than someone saying everything happens for a reason. Some things don't. Some things happen and there's no good reason, right? And saying that everything happens for a reason can be very diminishing of someone's loss and experience, right?

And so when I thought about the idea of meaning, I would think about it like, well, let's give a purpose to why this happened, right? Everything happens for a reason and meaning is that reason. So let's figure out why this happened. And I think my, that was my bad, right? That was my misunderstanding. I don't think that's anyone's expectation. I think what it comes down to is,

And the way I think about it is you have to find an outlet. You have to find some way to channel everything. And there's a very beautiful book called Grief is Love written by Marissa Renee Lee. And it's just beautiful. It's so beautiful. And in it, she has a line where she says that grief is

Reese Brown (21:05.528)

Hmm.

Annie Orenstein (21:18.702)

unrequited, unconditional love.

which is just the most perfect way to describe grief, because I will always love my brother unconditionally and it will always be unrequited, right? And the way I think about making meaning is I have all of this unconditional love and where can I put it? Can I channel it somewhere? How can I get that love back out into the universe instead of just

Reese Brown (21:27.928)

Yeah.

Reese Brown (21:45.816)

Hmm.

Annie Orenstein (21:53.134)

letting it eat me alive because it is unrequited and it is, you know, a torture to turn it around inside of me day after day. And so when it comes to making meaning, the way I understand it and the way that I think of it is I have this unconditional amount of love for my brother and I can't show it to him in the same way I could show it to him the first 25 years of my life.

But I hopefully have 75 years beyond that. So are there other ways that I can show that love and channel that love? And I think that's really what making meaning ultimately is all about, is finding an avenue for that love. And it could change and it can morph over time. But I think that's really the essence of it.

Reese Brown (22:48.536)

Hmm. That is so beautiful. And I think something really poignant about what you said is that if you keep it in, it almost turns malignant, right? That even though love is this pure thing, it wants to be given freely. It doesn't want to be held back. And when you do so, you're kind of putting these barriers on something unconditional, limitless, infinite.

Annie Orenstein (23:07.118)

Mm -hmm.

Annie Orenstein (23:17.262)

Mm -hmm.

Reese Brown (23:18.648)

and that inherently changes what it is because I, yeah, it just sounds like you're, I just completely agree that love is inherently a gift. And once it is no longer a gift, can it really be love?

Annie Orenstein (23:28.334)

You

Annie Orenstein (23:33.006)

Mm -hmm.

Annie Orenstein (23:36.814)

Yeah, and I think that it, I didn't really realize this until the book came out because working on the book, you know, was done very much in isolation as writing is, right? And I didn't show it to very many people beyond, you know, my agent and editor and husband, partly because I didn't want to be swayed by other people's opinions and all of that. I had my own reasons, but.

But so I worked on it very much alone. I was pouring out love into this book. And it wasn't until it came out that the love started to come back to me. And I didn't realize that would happen or what that would feel like. But what I have realized just, you know, the book came out less than a month ago as of our recording. And what I didn't anticipate was

the feeling of that love coming back because you kind of get used to the unrequited part of it, right? As torturous as it is. But every time I hear that I've helped someone, you know, or someone reaches out to say thank you or that something resonated or that they feel seen or whatever it is, that love is coming back.

and being shown to me. And it's incredible. And it, I think is, you know, a part of that is that if you hold that unrequited, you know, if you hold that unconditional love in, then no one can, no one can give it back to you. No one can project it back to you. And I would give up all of it to just have my brother here and be able to pick up the phone and call him, but I can't. And so, you know, I think this is,

Reese Brown (25:28.312)

Right.

Annie Orenstein (25:31.214)

this is a really nice plan B, right? It's kind of the best I can hope for given the reality that we're living in. And I didn't expect that unrequited love to feel, I didn't expect to feel it coming back to the extent that I have. And it's been really, really beautiful experience.

Reese Brown (25:58.776)

Hmm. It is almost as though once you are allowed to give that love freely to someone else, it also opens up this permission to give it to yourself, to also accept it.

Annie Orenstein (26:13.934)

That's a very good point.

Reese Brown (26:16.376)

Thank you. One thing that I also wanted to touch on is the relationship between siblingship and inner child work. One thing that you mentioned in the book is that the reason why sibling relationships are so complex and nuanced, but also important is whether you're close with a sibling or not, that is someone who

directly experienced the same like linear timeline of your personal evolution as you did. And that person will always be this encapsulation of the like symbol of your inner child. Can you talk to me a little bit about that and how siblingship can change our own personal relationship with ourselves?

Annie Orenstein (27:09.614)

Yeah. So I think, you know, siblings, there are a lot of people in our lives who know who we are, right? And people who can understand us on a really deep level, you know, our partners, our best friends. But the difference with our siblings is that they know who we are, but they also know why we are. They know why we do those

weird little things that we do and why we have those quirks and they can remember, you know, when this first thing happened. And I think that's something that we often don't realize how important that is. Sometimes we don't know why we do the thing we do until our sibling is like, yeah, well you do that because dad used to always do that or whoever used to always do that, you know?

And, you know, I think especially when you're the younger sibling, the guy am, you know, Ben was eight years older than me. So his memory of my childhood was more clear than my own memory of my childhood. I don't remember being two years old, but he was 10. He remembers me being two years old. And so he could fill in the gaps in my memory and

Reese Brown (28:21.752)

Hmm.

Reese Brown (28:28.472)

Wow.

Annie Orenstein (28:35.054)

siblings spend more time on average, siblings spend more time together, alone together than with their parents. And I think about that with my own children. And it's true, right after school, they're with a sitter, I'm still working right now. They're at summer camp, and they're at the same camp. And they're, you know, they share a room, they hang out at night after, you know, we closed the door, they

they inevitably spend more time together than they do with me. And so there's a lot of stuff they know about each other that I don't know about either of them. And a lot of things they understand about each other. And we get so used to that because it's kind of the defaults that we don't realize how important it is to have someone that you don't have to explain yourself to. You don't have to give a disclaimer. You don't have to...

Reese Brown (29:28.28)

Mmm.

Annie Orenstein (29:32.878)

give context, they just know and understand. And that's a very hard person to lose. And you often don't realize it until they're gone that, that was something that didn't exist with other people or in other relationships in my life. And they're also

Reese Brown (29:49.752)

you

Reese Brown (29:56.28)

Right?

Annie Orenstein (30:02.094)

supposed to be our longest relationship. It begins before we meet our partners and usually it survives beyond the death of our parents. And so because of that, losing them, especially, you know, early or younger is feels like it's out of the natural order of things. And you don't know how to exist without them. You've never existed in a world without them. It's very common.

after losing a sibling for people to think that they are going to die. And it doesn't matter how their sibling died. It doesn't matter if it was, you know, you'd think, okay, maybe if it was an accident, that could happen to anyone, or maybe if it was something genetic, you'd feel more. But the cause of death doesn't matter. The kind of logic in our lizard brains is we live for as long, this is our, you know,

Reese Brown (30:47.288)

sure.

Annie Orenstein (31:01.102)

We are born together, we get old together. So if that person has died, I too am going to die now. And it's something that I heard in the interviews that I conducted, but it's also something that's captured in academic literature. It's this incredible phenomenon of just like, even if you weren't close, you just expect to live the same amount of time. So if they're gone, you're like, well, shit.

I guess it's my time too. And it's such a unique thing, but they're just, you know, all of these elements of siblings, it doesn't even matter if you were close to them, right? Maybe all the time you spent together as a kid was pretty traumatic and maybe they were not a good sibling to you. That's still going to have an impact. That still is a

Reese Brown (31:57.144)

Yeah.

Annie Orenstein (31:58.286)

you know, I'm sure is a significant factor in who you are. We create our own identities relative to that of our siblings, whether it's that we want to be like them or we want to be as different from them as humanly possible.

Reese Brown (32:17.784)

That is, wow, that is really, really profound. And as someone who, I'm a younger sister and I'm not the closest with my sibling and.

What you just said was we create our identities in relationship to our siblings and yes, absolutely. And as someone who it's like, I am a living example of exactly what you're talking about, that you don't have to be close to them. You could have a very difficult relationship to them and they are still a goalpost in your life. That is that that measuring stick of where you are, where you've come from, where you're going.

And to lose that is unmooring, regardless of your relationship to the goalpost itself. And it's that unsettledness that is so traumatizing about losing that person.

Annie Orenstein (33:04.366)

Mm -hmm.

Annie Orenstein (33:16.91)

Yeah, and I think when you aren't close, it's also very difficult in grief because people say, well, you weren't close, were you?

Annie Orenstein (33:30.254)

And so I think that kind of gets even more diminished. And also for some people that I spoke to, some folks in the research, they weren't close, but they assumed that relationship would always exist. And so they thought, well, they're opportune, just because we're not close now doesn't mean that we won't get close in the future, especially if a loss is around adolescence and.

Reese Brown (33:30.68)

Yeah.

Annie Orenstein (33:55.982)

you know, they're teens and people are excited. Well, when we're adults, we're going to get along. And, you know, once we're out of the house, we'll be friends or whatever it is. But you always think you have more time with your sibling. And so a lot of people were mourning. The relationship they never got to have or the fact that, you know, it closed the door on any possibility of having a, you know, healthy and, you know,

Reese Brown (34:02.84)

Mm -hmm.

Annie Orenstein (34:25.198)

reciprocal sibling relationship, even if they hadn't had one to date, you know, a lot of people still hold out hope and that is gone as well.

Reese Brown (34:31.64)

Yeah.

Wow. Yeah. And I think it's Emily Dickinson that has the quote, hope is the thing with feathers. Like it is this lifting feeling and to be unmoored in that way. And then to also lose something that is integral to your future that you perhaps imagine would also feel deflating. I want to continue talking about this,

almost idea of guilt that I think we're maybe kind of treading around a little bit. Because of course with any death, you know, survivor's guilt is absolutely a thing. But I think especially with being young and having a relationship with someone when you're young and knowing that their time was cut short, that survivor's guilt, I would imagine

please share with me since I am absolutely not an expert on this, would perhaps increase, but also the guilt of perhaps not having acted sooner. You have a really beautiful section in the book about the shoulds that plague us after death happens. And I just have to imagine that it...

I've been lucky to only lose a few people in my life and even then those shoulds pop up, but with someone this close, I would have to imagine that there are so many. So I would love to hear a little bit more about the shoulds and the guilt that accompany this experience.

Annie Orenstein (36:19.598)

Yeah, yeah. In the book, I call these the dreaded shoulds. And it's true, there is a tremendous amount of survivors grief. Again, if you're supposed to live for the same amount of time and now they're gone and you're still here. And there's a lot of, you know, why me? Why them? The survivors guilt, the shoulds, I found in my research.

often had a lot to do with the cause of death, at least initially. So when there was, I'll give a very straightforward example. If there was illness involved and especially if there was some kind of genetic illness and you are biological siblings, that's just like Russian roulette, right? They got it and I didn't.

but there's no reason why. And you're, you know, with illness, you witness their suffering, you witness their illness, and you're seeing all this happening thinking, I have the exact same genetic makeup, and yet they got this thing and I didn't. And that was a very strong, you know, survivor's guilt. That's kind of the, you know, why them, why not me?

Reese Brown (37:47.736)

Hmm.

Annie Orenstein (37:49.55)

in when the death was related to addiction or mental health, you know, if suicide or overdose or anything like that was involved. There's often a lot that led up to that, right? Struggle with drugs, struggle with mental health. And there's often feelings of I should have done more.

Reese Brown (38:10.488)

Mm.

Annie Orenstein (38:18.862)

I should have, even for siblings who did everything. And I talked to quite a few of those who were there for every rehab stay, who took care of their siblings financially and emotionally and did everything, like took on parent roles. Even for those people, there was a feeling of I should have done more. And again, an element of like it could have been me.

Reese Brown (38:25.496)

rate.

Annie Orenstein (38:47.822)

right? These are diseases and we have the same genetic makeup. Like, that could have been me. And I think that feeling of like, I could have done more existed even when logically you couldn't have done more. And I wrote about this in the book, I felt a tremendous amount of grief because I was always convinced that this deployment was not going to end well.

Reese Brown (38:53.304)

Right?

Reese Brown (39:04.568)

Right.

Annie Orenstein (39:16.046)

And so I held all of this guilt that I didn't try harder to convince him to stay, even though I tried very hard to convince him to stay. And it wasn't, you know, I felt like what I did wasn't enough. And when I was writing the book and I was writing the section, I reached out to my brother, Sam, and said, you know, do you feel a lot of guilt? And he said, guilt about what?

Reese Brown (39:31.928)

Right?

Annie Orenstein (39:45.006)

And I was like that we didn't, that we couldn't convince Ben to stay, that we didn't do more to convince him to stay. And he was almost confused by my question. And he was like, we couldn't have convinced him to stay. Like in his mind, it was so far out of the realm, it was so far out of our control. And the way he explained it to me, he said, you know, we all know the hero's journey. And the hero is called

Reese Brown (39:59.352)

Wow.

Annie Orenstein (40:14.414)

to adventure, he has to go. And I would never have gone, this is my brother saying it, I would never have gone. I would have done everything in my power to get out of that deployment. But Ben was always gonna go. He was the hero on the journey and I never felt guilty. And I was shocked. I also was like, why didn't I ask you this 10 years ago? Like that would have really helped.

Reese Brown (40:25.144)

Right.

Hmm.

Reese Brown (40:36.664)

Right.

Reese Brown (40:43.0)

Yeah.

Annie Orenstein (40:43.342)

you know, but, but I think he was right, but that would have, that logic would have never crossed my mind, you know, but, but all of the, you know, there are also shoulds around, we should have had more time together. You know, we should have gotten old together. You know, a lot of the shoulds kind of stem from like this anger of feeling like you were robbed of something. but they're very.

Reese Brown (40:51.224)

rate.

Reese Brown (41:00.088)

Hmm.

Reese Brown (41:11.32)

Yeah.

Annie Orenstein (41:12.686)

pervasive and they.

Reese Brown (41:14.04)

Hmm.

Annie Orenstein (41:17.422)

they can really muddle the way we think about the situation and are part in it. And I think we put ourselves under kind of unrealistic expectations in a lot of ways, you know, should come from this place of feeling like we have more control than we really do. But thinking we don't have control is terrifying.

Reese Brown (41:41.528)

Yeah, yeah. Boy is it. One thing that you're talking about that this wasn't even a part of my preparation, but I'm so fascinated by hearing about your relationship with your brother Sam. You said you were the youngest of the three of you, yes?

Annie Orenstein (41:45.806)

haha

Annie Orenstein (42:00.206)

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Reese Brown (42:03.416)

How, with Ben being the oldest, eight years older than you, and then Sam, of course, being in between, how has your relationship with Sam shifted and changed in your siblingship, having gone through this shared experience of losing Ben, but also, I have to imagine, complete unique experience, because you're both still individual people that experienced Ben.

and your family in different ways, but you still have that goalpost in Sam that probably understands this more than anyone else can. How has that relationship shifted and changed and maybe helped or made more complicated your grieving process?

Annie Orenstein (42:39.182)

Mm -hmm.

Annie Orenstein (42:44.43)

Mm -hmm.

Annie Orenstein (42:55.118)

I think Sam and I, Sam and I are very, very close. And I like to think we would be very close regardless. But I obviously don't know that. But I will say, in the beginning, so Ben was the big brother that you call with your problems if you really wanna like explore them. You really wanna dissect.

Reese Brown (43:22.04)

Hmm.

Annie Orenstein (43:23.598)

the situation and like really get into it. And Sam was the brother you would call if you want to be distracted from your problems and you know, just like mood change. And he would talk about stuff if you wanted to, but he wasn't as he didn't he didn't necessarily like that just wasn't his thing. I don't know how else to describe it as personality. And I think after

Reese Brown (43:47.512)

Right.

Annie Orenstein (43:53.07)

Ben died, we didn't necessarily talk explicitly about it all the time, but we found ways to be together all the time. We both lived in Brooklyn and we would, you know, I would just stop by the apartment a lot. He worked on TV shows and if they were filming anywhere near where he knew I was in the city, he would call me and say,

I'm five blocks away, come to the set and I would show up. So we just kind of showed up for each other a lot and didn't necessarily dissect our feelings on the matter, but we're like physically together to the point of like standing while hugging each other, you know, like really kind of clinging on to it. When I started,

Reese Brown (44:24.6)

Ugh.

Reese Brown (44:47.096)

Hmm.

Annie Orenstein (44:51.214)

working on the book, we started talking more and more about these things, because I would often reach out and say like, you know, those questions like, do you feel guilty? And I would just trigger him right in the middle of the day, like a good little sister.

Reese Brown (45:07.768)

I just lost you for a quick second. there you are. Okay, I lost you for a quick second. The last I heard was when you started working on the book, you would reach out with some questions. If we can go back to right there, that would be perfect.

Annie Orenstein (45:10.702)

can you hear me? Okay.

Annie Orenstein (45:24.174)

Okay, yes. Yes. So I would trigger him in the middle of the day, like a good little sister does, and send him these text messages. And I think it opened up a lot for us because we started talking about it a lot more, and we started talking about him a lot more. And it's interesting because in reading Ben's diaries, which I did much later,

Reese Brown (45:34.84)

That's right, that's right.

Reese Brown (45:43.448)

Hmm.

Annie Orenstein (45:54.03)

there's an entry where he talks about, we're visiting him at study abroad and he talks about his relationship with Sam and his relationship with me and how they're different. And I think it was very emblematic of what we both lost. I think he really captured the essence of what we both struggled with because of what the relationship was.

Reese Brown (46:04.6)

Mm -mm.

Annie Orenstein (46:21.774)

And it was different, but it was very close for all of us. And I don't think we can fill that void for each other, but we don't really try to. I don't try to act like the big brother that he lost. And he has admitted that he tried to take on the role of big brother of oldest.

Reese Brown (46:31.576)

Hmm.

Annie Orenstein (46:46.862)

for some amount of time, but he now feels that he is solidly back as the middle child. And so I think we have, we're not trying to be anything that we're not for each other, but we are always there for each other. And, you know, in how things have changed, I think we weren't always the best at like talking all of the time because you just assume there will always be time. And now, you know, a few times a week,

Reese Brown (47:12.056)

Yeah.

Annie Orenstein (47:14.606)

We call or text each other just to say, I love you. And I don't know that we would be doing that otherwise. If Ben was still here, I don't know that we would be doing that. And I'm glad that we do.

Reese Brown (47:17.624)

Hmm.

Reese Brown (47:24.984)

tour.

Yeah, absolutely. I think one thing about what you're talking about in not having to fill that role or necessarily even talk about it, but having a shared experience with someone and then just sharing the space. Like it goes back to what you were saying at the very beginning of our conversation about a sibling, that it's just someone who sees

without you having to expend the energy to have them see. They just bear witness naturally because there's really no way that they can't, because they're right there beside you. And I think that having someone see what you're going through so transparently is really healing in and of itself that...

Annie Orenstein (48:01.102)

Mm -hmm.

Annie Orenstein (48:18.99)

Mm -hmm.

Reese Brown (48:21.56)

I mean, you're not alone in it is typical or cliche that that may sound like that is truly.

deeply meaningful. One thing I also wanted to make sure we talked about was this idea with siblings and grief. In reading your book, I was thinking a lot about how we can grieve things that maybe haven't passed on. And these griefs that we can have throughout our life, and that was actually one thing that was really powerful for me about the book.

was this idea of grieving, perhaps hope of a specific relationship with my brother or grieving, the family dynamic that I won't have, right? That these are still griefs related to my siblingship. And yet my brother is still here. I would love to hear your thoughts about that and how your book could also support, people going through that too.

Annie Orenstein (49:31.95)

I think, so my understanding and hopefully I'm not using this term wrong, but that's kind of known as an ambiguous loss or ambiguous grief when you're grieving something that's still alive or still there, you know, and that happens a lot with things like estrangement. And I think...

Such a good question. Because when I started writing the book and I was doing these interviews, a few people reached out and said, you know, I haven't, my brother, you know, hasn't died, but we're estranged. Is that the kind of loss that you're talking about? And I would say, no, you know, that's a different experience, a different book. But what I've heard since the book came out is that,

It has been helpful for people in those situations, in part because it helps.

that helps people understand why they're grieving something, especially if you were never that close. You know, a lot of people are like, don't, are almost confused at like, why am I upset? We were never close. I don't even like this person very much, right? Like maybe it's my choice that we're estranged and yet I still feel like I'm grieving. And I think there is a...

false perception that we only grieve people that we had a wonderful relationship with. Which is not true. We grieve imperfect people and we grieve imperfect relationships, perhaps even more. And I think acknowledging

Reese Brown (51:10.168)

Mm.

Annie Orenstein (51:22.862)

what you have lost and the situation that you're in and coming to that acceptance of it is really important for any type of grief. And really thinking through is this, do I wanna make changes or is this the reality that I need to accept? And...

I don't know, you know, it's something that I haven't experienced. And so it's like a harder thing to kind of understand. But I have heard from some people who have read the book, you know, I've reached out to my surviving sibling and we've had more conversations since reading your book than we ever had before, you know, or things like that where it either spurs someone to reach out and rekindle those relationships or

to understand, okay, at least I understand why I'm grieving. I understand why I'm so upset, even if it's not healthy for me to have a relationship with this person. And I'm going to continue to not have a relationship with this person, but at least I can acknowledge and understand where this grief feeling is coming from. Because otherwise you're like, what am I so sad about? Like this person isn't good for me. I don't want them in my life. So why am I sad?

Reese Brown (52:41.496)

Hmm.

Annie Orenstein (52:49.39)

And I think especially those pieces in the book that talk about, you know, the childhood connection and those elements of it help explain that feeling a little bit so that you can at least understand where it's coming from.

Reese Brown (52:49.912)

Yeah.

Reese Brown (53:04.089)

Yeah, I think one of the pieces in the book around this that was so poignant to me was when you discussed complicated grief. And I believe it was a quote you pulled from someone else. Please correct me if I'm wrong. But it was talking about how complicated grief is relentless. And because of that, it can almost be more difficult to hold because there's

all these layers and wrinkles. And of course, any type of grief is layered and wrinkled and complicated. But I think that confusion really makes it so difficult to process, right? Until we have an understanding. I don't know if there's really a question embedded in there, but I would love to hear more about complicated grief and how that relates to this.

Annie Orenstein (54:00.27)

Yeah, so complicated grief is, it is relentless and it is prolonged. It's now known as, it's undergoing a rebrand, but it's now kind of known as prolonged grief disorder. And it's grief that is relentless, that is, you're almost, you're almost stuck.

Reese Brown (54:18.488)

Hmm.

Annie Orenstein (54:30.03)

There's a preoccupation with the loss, sometimes with the cause of death. There's a very strong yearning for the person and kind of everything amplified compared to like a resilient grief where you see more forward movement in the healing process and in the kind of acceptance process. And so,

Complicated grief is, I suffered from complicated grief for many years after Ben died. And it was as if, you know, as if every day you're getting the news for the first time and you're trying to understand it. And you're very fixated on all of the elements of it. And it can often lead to panic attacks, nightmares,

you know, physical symptoms, you know, having cortisol levels up for a long time is not good for us. And so it can often kind of even manifest in some of those physical ways. But it is like, it is like feeling stuck. And I remember people talking about moving through grief and not understanding what they were talking about.

Reese Brown (55:46.68)

Hmm.

Annie Orenstein (55:55.31)

you know, because even five years out, it was like, but I don't get, I don't get what you mean. Like it feels the same as it did. I'm in quicksand. Right. And, and I didn't, I think because I didn't know anyone else who had lost a sibling and I wasn't really talking to Sam about this kind of element of it. and so I just talked it up to

Reese Brown (56:03.32)

I'm in quicksand. I'm not moving forward. Yeah.

Annie Orenstein (56:23.31)

people don't understand what it's like. You know, it's not the same as losing a grandparent. People just don't get it. Whereas I honestly, my therapist should have perhaps pointed it out at the time. That would have been helpful. But I think I just thought, well, they don't get it. And that's why they're not experiencing this. And I am when really, you know, what I was experiencing was this prolonged grief disorder and

there are a lot of ways to help, you know, and that is one of the types of grief where professional health and therapy and counseling is really strongly recommended because it's not something that you can really take yourself out of by yourself.

Reese Brown (57:09.848)

Right. Yeah. I think, interestingly, in losing, one thing that I'm hearing is a theme throughout all of this is that in losing a piece of your community, it's also a reminder to return back to that community and that in connection, you can kind of not bring back, not

experience the same relationship or feeling, but commemorate in a way, remember again, that feeling of connection, which I think is really meaningful. And I want to ask a little bit more about this making meaning piece as we come to the ending ish of our conversation.

Annie Orenstein (58:04.014)

Hehehehehe

Reese Brown (58:10.232)

I think it's also interesting, I have several friends who are only children and many of them are like, I just so wish I had a sibling. I so wish I had a sibling. And I always tell them, I'm like, it's hard. It's really hard. And when you're young and you get mad at your siblings, you wish you were an only child. And so I kind of want to ask about,

Annie Orenstein (58:33.198)

Mm -hmm.

Reese Brown (58:37.976)

how having that sibling relationship changes the way we approach the meaning of our lives and that change between only childness and siblingship. And I know that you as a sibling have never experienced only childness, but through your research or your book, I would love to know more about that and the approach to meaning.

Annie Orenstein (59:05.71)

Yeah, I think it was interesting because I did, I talked to a few people, quite a few people who lost their only sibling and they struggled a lot with people thinking that they are an only child when they are not an only child. And, you know, again, I'm not an only child. I didn't interview only children for the book.

Reese Brown (59:17.496)

Hmm.

Reese Brown (59:27.928)

Wow. Yeah.

Annie Orenstein (59:35.886)

but obviously it's going to be different, right? Like, because we spend so much time with this person in childhood, it's going to be different. And so people, people were very distressed when they were misidentified as only children, not because there's some, anything wrong with being an only child, but because you spend so much time with this person, your identity is often formed in relation to this person. And so.

Reese Brown (01:00:04.024)

There's a sense of erasure there.

Annie Orenstein (01:00:05.966)

Yes, exactly. There is a feeling like this person is being erased and this person is a part of who I am. And if they're a race, then who I am makes no sense. There's no foil. There's no anything. It's not exactly what you're asking, but I have a dear friend, who's also an author, who is an only child married to an only child, and they have an only child.

Reese Brown (01:00:16.696)

Right?

Annie Orenstein (01:00:33.518)

So this is like an only child pod, you know? And she called me after reading just the intro to the book and she was sobbing. And she was like, I don't even know why I'm upset. I don't have siblings. I don't know anything about siblings. This is so beautiful. Now I wish I had a sibling, you know, like, and it's, there's so much to siblinghood that you can't understand as an only child.

Just like there's tons about only child that I can't understand is someone who had siblings and is raising multiple children. And so I think that they're very, very different experiences. And a lot of people I know, you know, some people would change it and some people weren't, wouldn't, but I think it's, it's a lot of it has to do with the relationship with your parents as well. And the stress.

Reese Brown (01:01:07.096)

Right.

Reese Brown (01:01:28.376)

Mm.

Annie Orenstein (01:01:30.862)

or non -stress that that has. If you've been raised with a sibling, you think you always have that person to help you with your parents. And so I think they're very different things. And it was interesting to me how people who lost their only sibling, the level of distress that they expressed when recounting.

Reese Brown (01:01:56.056)

Hmm.

Annie Orenstein (01:02:00.014)

times when they were mistaken as an only sibling. And I think it's exactly that erasure that you're talking about.

Reese Brown (01:02:07.352)

Yeah, yeah, that's really powerful because I mean, it's true. There's no way to understand that experience without having had it on both the sibling and only child side. And I think while having the sibling to serve as a foil brings its own beauties, it brings its own challenges as well. And same thing for being the only child. It brings its own beauties and it brings its own challenges.

My last question before we start wrapping up. I think grief is often labeled as a negative feeling that it is bad. We don't want to do it. And I think there's a lot of feelings that are labeled as negative when in reality, feelings should be neutral, right? Because we can't control how they arise. We can only control how we respond to them. So it's really not fair to call.

anger or joy, good or bad. But when we experience these quote unquote negative emotions, you took, I'll use your words, the hardest thing that's ever happened to you and created something to help other people through one of the hardest things that will ever happen to them.

and that was a part of your meaning making process through all of this. What would you say to someone who was going through that really hard thing, negative feelings and wants to make meaning out of it?

Annie Orenstein (01:03:51.246)

I think.

Annie Orenstein (01:03:55.438)

I can only speak for myself, but I think if, kind of like we mentioned in the beginning, I think if someone had told me to make meaning, I would have had a real knee -jerk reaction in the opposite direction.

And so I think that people need to first and foremost kind of get there on their own. They need to want to make meaning or, you know, kind of as we talked about it, like they need to want to find that.

channel that way to channel the love, which I think is what making meaning really is, at least in relation to grief. And, and so I guess I would say for people who, who want to try to find a way to make meaning, it is to think about how can I show my love for this person? How can I take the love I have for this person and put it back out into the world? Is it by

making beautiful art, is it by volunteering? You know, it could be doing something that has absolutely nothing to do with the person or their death. And maybe you are the only one who knows why you are doing it. And that's fine, because you're only doing it for you. You don't have to do it for anyone else. But I would say if you

If you are looking to make meaning, then I would find ways.

Annie Orenstein (01:05:34.702)

to do something that brings you joy and something where you can put that love back out into the world. And I think that is kind of at its essence what making meaning is all about. And sometimes if you label it as making meaning, it puts a lot of pressure on it and it puts a lot of weight on it. And you feel like, well, you know, my person was

Reese Brown (01:05:58.872)

Mmm.

Annie Orenstein (01:06:04.27)

they're better than this or they deserve more than I can give or whatever it is. And so that's why I think, you know, if you kind of take the pressure off a little bit and just say like there's any small thing can be meaning making. But it's just how we put that love back out into the world.

Reese Brown (01:06:26.264)

That's really, really beautiful. In light of our conversation and all of the things we discussed, is there anything else that you want to put out there that you would like to clarify, return to, or something that maybe we didn't touch on that you're like, we need to talk about this? This is kind of space and time for anything that might be on your heart.

Annie Orenstein (01:06:54.094)

I know, I think this has been a wonderful conversation. I really appreciate it. Your questions have been so thoughtful and I really appreciate it.

Reese Brown (01:07:03.352)

Absolutely. My final question to kind of put a little bow on our time spent together is just what is one word to describe how you're feeling right now?

Reese Brown (01:07:22.291)

Hmm. Can I ask why?

Annie Orenstein (01:07:25.902)

The sun's coming in the window. I see the leaves blowing. My dog is napping next to me. My work day hasn't started yet. So I haven't had the stress of the nine to five kick in yet. And I think this conversation has been very filled with that love.

and peace and so I feel very very calm.

Reese Brown (01:08:04.632)

I am so glad. Thank you so much for your time, your energy, and for sharing your love of Ben and siblings with us today. I am so grateful. Thank you so much for being here.

Annie Orenstein (01:08:20.238)

Thank you.