As children, George and I were naturals at trial and error. We would try something, fall flat, get back up, and try again. Sometimes we laughed. Sometimes we wailed. Either way, we kept going. Then life became harder.

We were criticized for our mistakes and reminded of our shortcomings so often that failure began to feel dangerous. Eventually, we both learned to protect ourselves from it. We just did it in very different ways.

George became more hesitant to try new things. I went the opposite direction and threw myself headfirst into risk. I learned to push harder, work harder, and prove myself. But emotional risk was different for both of us.

That required vulnerability. And when you’ve spent much of your childhood protecting yourself, vulnerability can feel like an invitation to be hurt again. I began to harden. George somehow stayed soft. He watched people closely, but he was far more willing to trust than I was. I didn’t trust people until they had proven themselves trustworthy. George trusted people until they gave him a reason not to. Both approaches came at a cost.

Neither of us knew much about serenity.

Around other people, we could become self-conscious and watchful.

I was especially vigilant, constantly noticing expressions, words, tone, and behavior. By our late teens, alcohol sometimes offered an escape from all that noise. Eventually, I realized it made things worse for me.

George continued drinking, usually beer. It seemed to quiet something in him and make it easier for him to relax and go with the flow. But underneath, we were both struggling.

When we believed we had disappointed someone or fallen short of what was expected of us, our instinct was often the same:

Leave.

For years, we were very good at running from things that hurt. We also carried the belief that failure said something about our worth. It took us a long time to unlearn that.

As we grew older, we both became determined to build lives beyond what had happened to us. Again, we did it differently. I clenched my fists and pushed. I could turn determination into tension without even realizing it.

George wanted no part of living that way. Eventually, he found another way. He stopped treating failure as a verdict and began treating it as part of the experience. Try something. See what happens. Learn something.

Try again. George took risks. He made mistakes. He changed direction. He stumbled plenty. And little by little, he built a life he could call his own.

In Port Alexander, Alaska, something in him finally settled. He stayed present. He connected with the people and place around him. He did things he once might have been afraid to try. And he kept trying. One day I asked him how he had become so peaceful with his life. His answer was pure George.

“Sis, just do what you love, and you can’t do it wrong. After all we went through, now there is no wrong. Now, it is what it is.”

That didn’t mean George believed there were no consequences or that nothing mattered.

He meant something much simpler. He no longer believed every mistake meant he had failed as a person.

Problems were things to work through, not proof that something was wrong with him.

“You can’t do it wrong anymore,” he would tell me.

“Get those old words from Dotti out of your head.”

I’m still working on that one. George learned to loosen his grip on all those old judgments. He stopped allowing someone else’s voice from long ago to decide whether he was succeeding or failing at his own life. He did what he loved. He stayed present. He tried. He stumbled. And he tried again. Somewhere along the way, he found the serenity he had spent much of his life searching for. For me, that kind of acceptance can still feel daunting.

But when I hear those old voices telling me I’m doing something wrong, I can almost hear George answering them: “Sis, you can’t do it wrong anymore.”

And maybe that’s enough to help me try again.

In the sleepy hamlet of Port Alexander in Southeast Alaska, amenities like wifi, cell service, and even electricity are a luxury.

Diesel generators run everything, and fuel isn’t cheap, so conservation is a cornerstone of daily life