When You Don’t Vote For Harris And Your Sister Beats You Up

My lawyer sister, who runs a huge nonprofit and is an absolute spitfire, laid it out to our rough-around-the-edges Midwestern family: if we voted for Trump, she said, we’d be signing our own death warrants.

I voted for Jill Stein. Honestly, I might as well have used my ballot for toilet paper. But I’m an environmentalist and a doctor, like Stein — who else was I going to vote for? I’m the “hippie healer” type, happier in a hut than boxed into four walls. An academic at heart, too.

I’m sitting there wondering if my big sister is going to blow up over the holidays. It’s been a recurring thought since childhood — she was always a bully. Being the youngest, I got the brunt of it, and sisters can be ruthless. I actually stopped going to family holidays 20 years ago because of her behavior. Now that she’s some big-shot VP for a global Christian organization focused on helping women, I’m concerned that her bottled-up anger might be aimed at me and my brother.

I just dropped two grand on flights, hotels, and rental cars to visit their little corner of Michigan for the holidays. Now I get to look forward to the usual abuse — for daring not to vote for Trump.