ALWAYS A SIBLING

A practical, prescriptive, compassionate guide to sibling loss, with research, stories, and strategies for "forgotten mourners" as they move through the stages of grief towards finding meaning.

After her brother died during a military operation in Afghanistan, Annie Sklaver Orenstein felt heartbroken and unmoored. Standing in the grief section of her local bookstore, she searched for guides on how to work through her grief as a mourning siblingand found nothing. More than 4 million American adults each year will lose a sibling, yet there isn't a modern resource guide available that speaks directly to this type of grief that at times can be overshadowed by grieving parents and spouses and made even more difficult by the complexities of sibling dynamics.
In Always a Sibling, Orenstein uses her own story and those of others to create the empathic, thoughtful, practical guide that she sought.. Divided into three sections: With, Without, and Within, Always a Sibling creates a framework that enables the reader to ground themselves in order to process and validate this often overlooked grief. Orenstein guides readers to capture the memories and emotions of life with their now deceased sibling, then moves to addressing the grieving process in detail as they navigate life without them. Ultimately, readers will find ways to experience their sibling's presence within themselves and acknowledge their legacy. Each chapter is accompanied by activities rooted in proven grief processing techniques, trauma recovery, and psychoanalysis, tailored to support the unique experience of sibling loss.
Annie Sklaver Orenstein is an ethnographic researcher, oral historian, and storyteller who has spent the last decade collecting stories from people around the world on behalf of companies including
Viacom, Mattel, Instagram, Facebook, Pfizer, Netflix, Johnson Johnson, and more. Her work has been featured on NBC Nightly News, Comedy Central, Huffington Post, Politico TIME and Mother.ly. In 2020, driven by a desire to share these stories beyond the walls of corporate America, Annie founded Dispatch from Daybreak, a collection of letters written by womxn to their earlier selves. She lives with her family in Connecticut.