Thank you for the heartfelt sharing!

In some ways, your sister sounds a bit like my own mother who eternally seemed determined to fill "her empty spaces inside" with accomplishments, glitz, status and material wealth... even though all that "having" and "superiority posturing" never made her feel better about her life. She more or less "made a career" out of marrying well but somehow it never got her what she actually wanted... and her relentless pursuit of these things created manipulative and abusive fallout for those around her.

Although my mom and I were never all that close, I do miss her now that she has been gone for about a decade. However we might feel about someone, we can't get away from the fact that they had a major role in shaping our lives. In most of my adult life, I found myself quite leery of anyone who came across as having an inflated sense of self... as my dad would say, back when I was a teenager "your mother checks her reflection in every shop window in part to check her appearance, and in part to wave to her imaginary fans!"

After my mother died (chronic liver failure from a lifetime of heavy drinking) I had some frank conversations with her cousin back in Denmark, who also was often her best "sane" friend... and her thumbnail analysis was that my mother always chose money and status even though what she most wanted was to be loved as she was.