Life with My Sister Madonna
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I don’t know whether Madonna has learned anything from our years together, but if she has, I hope it is Kabbalah’s lesson that she is not the center of the universe, and that every action, every decision she makes affects not only her but the people around her.
Yet if my sister’s actions have ever affected me negatively, I know now that I also bear some of that burden and accept that I am responsible for the choices I have made.
Even though our contact is minimal these days, any bitterness I had once felt for my sister has long since evaporated. I look back on our life together with affection. I consider it a privilege to have been able to share her success with her.
I don’t hold any grudges against her, nor do I bear her any ill will. I love her very much and will always be grateful for everything we shared. My sister has done so much for me, and all I have to do is look at her loving birthday cards—so emotional in expressing sentiments she could never have articulated to me in person—and I know how much she loves me.
I cherish all the memories of the good times I’ve had with my sister, the personal ones, the intimate ones, the professional ones. Looking back on our years of working together, of being together, it seems as if—after the dysfunctional nature of our childhood—we created a little world for each other, and I loved it. It was sure, protected, intensely creative, and I felt safe there. It wasn’t a touchy-feely, intimate world, because Madonna isn’t like that, nor am I. But in retrospect, it was my utopia, the place where, more than anywhere else, I could take refuge, where Madonna and I—two children forever yearning for their lost mother—could love and be loved as best we could.
In my heart, my mind, and my soul, Madonna and I remain inseparable in spirit. We are forever linked together by blood and the incredible adventure that is our lives.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
MANY PEOPLE HAVE taken part in the telling of this story. I particularly want to express my sincere gratitude to my agent, Fredrica Friedman, for her expertise and enthusiastic support; my brilliant editor, Tricia Boczkowski; my superlative publisher, Jennifer Bergstrom. Thanks, as well, to the other folks at Simon & Schuster for keeping it legal and cutting edge, especially my art director, Michael Nagin. I also want to thank my coauthor, Wendy Leigh, who always had my back and without whom this would not have been possible.