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Cheryl Albright is an occupational therapist and yoga therapist working in Florida, USA. She founded Soul to Soul Yoga after training in the Sonia Sumar Method – Yoga for All Abilities over 16 years ago.

Cheryl has an autistic older brother and launched her blog ‘Autism Sibling – just trying to figure it out’ in 2020 whilst navigating a challenging healthcare system during the middle of a global pandemic. She also runs Sibshops, which provide young siblings aged 7-12 years old with information and peer support, in a lively, recreational setting.

Tell me about your journey into sibhood?

My father got sick in 2019. I kind of knew it was coming the year before that and had started to plan because he didn’t have a plan for my sibling. He was already in a group home, but there’s paperwork and illegal things that had to be done in the US that had not been done.

I was just like: ‘There’s gotta be something for siblings out here’. I felt like I was in this silo. So, oddly enough, I had reached out to the Sibling Support Project to try to see if there were sibling support groups for adult sibs, because the page read as very children oriented. Don Meyer, who started Sibshops, answered my email (and I had no idea who he was!) and told me how to look up chapters within the state I was in. I was in the midst of chaos and I completely had forgotten, but then a sponsored Facebook post came across my feed that said the Sibling Leadership Network is having a conference.

I was like: ‘Excuse me? Who are these people?’. I had no idea! I had other plans and completely re-arranged them, because my husband was like ‘You gotta go! Please, for your own sanity.’ So I showed up in Minneapolis and met a room full of 200 other sibs.

No story was too crazy. People were writing books, people were doing blogs, people were doing advocacy, all of these things. I was like: ‘Oh, like this is the thing! Okay.’ But I wasn’t finding these people on social media, so I’m now connected with a number of them on various different platforms.

 

How did your work with sibs come about?

I was gonna just create something for kids that had a brother or sister with a disability, and then I discovered there’s already a curriculum for that. So three months after that conference, we’re on a plane to Texas and taking the Sibshop training. And then we all know COVID kind of slowed things down.

In the meantime, I started writing a blog as a therapeutic outlet to get things out. I knew other people could probably benefit from it, so I just made it online instead of just writing it down in a journal. And eventually it’ll be a book. I wrote a chapter for another sibling in a book she’s publishing, so it was like the stepping stone to: ‘Maybe I’ll actually get to that project.’

I’m running Sibshops. Not as often as I would like. Nobody knows what a Sibshop is. When I say I’m running Sibshops, nobody signs up, because nobody has a clue. I’m working with my digital marketer, who has a son with Down’s Syndrome.

 

Thinking about your blog, why do you think it is important that siblings have access to this information?

To know they’re not alone.

I think a lot of us could suffer from different forms of mental illness. We need a tribe, we’re social beings, we need that kind of support. When I hit the brink is when I was like: ‘Oh yeah, I need… but I don’t know who to turn to.’

It was a place to just vomit anything that came outta my brain. And then some of it was informational too – I just thought it was important that people had that. The post on ‘How do you apply for services in Florida’, I published that five years ago, and it’s still the highest search.

 

On a personal note, what’s the hardest thing and the best thing about being a sib?

The hardest thing is the advocacy is exhausting. Especially in the current climate. If it was just me, I wouldn’t be living in the US right now. I would’ve left during his first administration. It’s hard to watch people cheer for services getting taken away. So that’s probably the hardest part. I think we have so much damn empathy that when stuff like this happens, it’s hard to see why another person can’t see this as a bad thing.

The best part? It definitely had something to do with my career. There were always therapists running in and out of the house and things like that. Had I not had that, I don’t know that I would’ve picked healthcare.

 

What do you wish non-siblings understood about sibhood? What’s the one thing they could do to support sibs?

Just one? [Laughs]. I think it starts when we’re young. I remember not wanting friends to spend the night, or not wanting to have sleepovers or always wanting to be out of the house. I think it starts with the parents and teaching that we have a variety of people that live in this world, that some people just look different, and having those early conversations with younger children.

I met a young sib who’s very quick to get angry and I can empathize with that. Like: ‘Anybody makes fun of my sister, I’m just gonna…’ We need to learn how to channel that, to put it somewhere positive. We’ve all been there, but that will get you in some serious trouble. So how do we take that anger and put it somewhere else?

My brother had a series of very bad run-ins with hospitals and emergency rooms. So I created a complete slide deck of how do you handle that in the emergency room for the nurses, doctors, techs. This is somebody who has limited language and they’re not able to verbally tell you what’s going on. So I said here’s some best practices and here’s some further resources.

Listen, we’re all just human.

 

What else would you like other sibs to know?

Create your own plan. That does not have to match what your parents’ wishes are. And it’s okay. And parents need to stop the guilt. I understand that maybe you don’t want them in a group home and you’re gonna keep them home as long as possible, but that may not be ideal for the world or the life that we’ve created. Stop it.

I’ve had so many sibs that are like: ‘Oh my God, I’m gonna have to take over…’ I was like: ‘No you don’t. Just have a plan.’ It might be temporary. I mean, I had my brother for the better part of six weeks, but it’s just temporary.

And if they’re gonna make those kind of plans, they better have the funds and the documents and the things like that to back it up. You don’t get blanket wishes. When you are surrounded by a group of humans, all you have to say is: ‘Go time!’. That’s exactly what I did, because I knew there wasn’t anything. I had an attorney, I had a financial planner, I had just humans. I had the person who is in charge of the waiver support services on speed dial. So all I had to do is put ‘CRISIS’ in capital letters.

Live your life, have fun, go do things. I travel internationally quite a bit. And is there gonna be puppies and rainbows? No. Like getting a phone call in the middle of Rwanda when I finally had cell phone signal, that things weren’t done, that were supposed to be done. I’m like: ‘What do you want me to do from the middle of Africa?’

Just live life. Have a plan.

 

Read Cheryl’s blog, Autism Sibling – Just trying to figure it out
Find out more about Soul to Soul Yoga, Florida
Connect with Cheryl on Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook