Author Anna Snoekstra on returning to her childhood self

We were three days into the trip when I felt the return. My mother and I had come to visit my sister in Perth – the most time we’d spent together since I’d lived at home as a teenager – and soon fell into old habits: early morning cafés, newspapers and political debate.

On that third morning, the heat was intense, even though it was barely 9am. The sun glared into my eyes and I felt jittery from black coffee on an empty stomach. I found myself going quiet, retreating into my chair. I could feel my childhood self returning, her ghost tugging at my ankles. The crushingly shy, passive, accommodating version of myself I’d long thrown off was threatening to reappear.

I was a quiet kid. Because of hearing issues during the formative language phase, I was slow to talk and uncomfortable doing so for years after I learnt, due to a pronounced lisp. Instead, my big sister would talk for me, intuiting what I wanted most of the time and making it up when she couldn’t.

At school, I was years behind in learning to read and write. But as an adult, I am very different. I am now an author and university teacher, confident in speaking my mind to full auditoriums. Building that self-assurance had been long and difficult. Yet, in just three days I’d started regressing.

Back home after the trip, I tell my friends about it over drinks. I’m surprised when they laugh in recognition: one admits she always becomes the peacekeeper again when visiting her folks; another is the family mess; a third, the golden child.

The ex-golden child tells us she excelled at sport, and now feels the urge to bring career successes to her parents in the same way she used to bring them plastic trophies (and when things go badly, she never tells them). The ex-peacekeeper tells us about going home for months when her mother was seriously unwell, and how she spent most of her energy navigating arguments between her siblings. As a friend, however, she is more likely to begin a confrontation than negotiate one. The ex-family mess just smiles and orders another bottle of wine. We don’t ask.

What causes this gravitational pull to familial roles we have long outgrown? Perhaps it’s the pressure of expectation.

Anna Snoekstra

What causes this gravitational pull to familial roles we have long outgrown? Perhaps it’s the pressure of expectation. Intra-family relationships are like detailed choreography, where every part is integral to the whole. If one person shifts, everything turns off-kilter.

Familiarity also has a part to play, too; as we spend time in a social environment we know so well, emotional muscle memory takes over. For me, it was easier not to speak and so when my sister spoke for me, she unconsciously validated my silence.