The Perfect Sister: What Draws Us Together, What Drives Us Apart Book

Sisterhood is one of the most complicated relationships anyone can have. Throughout their lives, sisters are confidantes, competitors, touchstones for shared memories, and, sometimes, each other's harshest critics. Our siblings are our first peers and often our last link to our families. But, sisters who grow up under the same roof actually experience very different families; they inhabit distinct positions, express unique talents, and elicit different responses from their parents.Marcia Millman has spent hundreds of hours interviewing sisters to examine how these complex bonds are formed and how they keep changing throughout life, for better and for worse. Millman has discovered that adult sisters who are close are those able to fully appreciate the different realities they experienced as children. In this book there are sisters who were always close and sisters who became friends later; there are sisters who shared their childhoods but developed painful rifts as adults. But even those who are at odds often feel deeply attached - perhaps because, as Millman finds, the sister bond is inseparable from a woman's connection to her mother. Still, all of us can transform our relationships, as long as we relate to the sister in the present, and not just to the sister of the past.Here we learn about our sisters, our families, and ourselves. And the moving stories in this book offer the key to understanding, appreciating, and enriching this lifelong, incomparable bond.Read More