An organization by siblings, for siblings.

Mission.

The Sibling Transformation Project is an anti-ableist organization of siblings of disabled people, grounded in anti-oppression and collective liberation. We support transformation in families with disabilities toward an interdependent world where all our access needs are met and our communities thrive.

Vision.

The Sibling Transformation Project is where siblings unite to engage in anti-ableist education, reflection, and action. Siblings of disabled people find in the Sibling Transformation Project a space to gather, heal, and recognize the impacts of ableism on our families (and within them). The Sibling Transformation Project is a community of growth and transformation, where we create and sustain interdependent family and community systems.

Our commitments.

  • We love TL Lewis’s definition of ableism (found here). We know that many of us show up not knowing anything about ableism - and that’s ok - we are committed to doing the work together along the way. We address ableism when it shows up in ourselves, and also look at how ableism has impacted our families.

  • We understand that white supremacy and ableism compound their impacts on disabled people of color. We are committed to having a critical mass of people of color in all of our programing, creating affinity spaces for siblings of color, and to supporting the needs of disabled people of color through all of our work. We’re committed to addressing white supremacy as it shows up in us.

  • We know that there’s a long history of ableism in the oppression of queer and trans people and we’re committed to making our spaces inclusive to queer and trans siblings. We are committed to practices that create access for queer and trans folks, including sharing our pronouns with each other and creating affinity spaces for queer and trans siblings.

  • We know that the oldest sibling assigned female at birth is most likely to be the one who is expected to take on caregiving within our family systems, and thus is most likely to show up to sibling spaces for support. We dream together of a world built on the interdependence of disability justice that frees us all from this assumption and allows everyone in our families to have their support needs met, regardless of assumptions based on sex at birth.

How do we show up?

When we come together and share our stories, suddenly we don’t feel alone. We “get it” in our shared experience of how ableism impacted our families, even though we didn’t have language for it then. When we’re together, we can make meaning of what we’ve experienced and understand what we need now to show up fully in our lives and with our families. STP is committed to creating this caucus space amongst siblings of disabled people and allowing it to transform us and our communities around us.

We show up bringing all of ourselves. We know that our racial, gender, age, religious, cultural, and other identities inform who we are - and we bring this context with us. We know that we have lots of experiences, wisdom, interests, talents, and humor - and we invite all of this into our spaces too.

We are deeply informed by the ideas of emergent strategy (more about what that is here) - and we believe that when we are together, we can have the exact conversation that we need to have. And, it seems to work out! Our spaces allow us to hold the complexity and somberness of the world we live in, and also hold the joy and brilliance of being alive that is in all of us.