For almost a year, I had been helping my younger sister, Jenna, with her kids.<\/p>\n
She worked long shifts at a dental office, and money was always tight, so I never charged her. Most weeks, I picked up the children after school, made dinner, helped with homework, and sometimes stayed until nearly midnight.<\/p>\n
I thought I was simply helping family.<\/p>\n
Then one Tuesday, six-year-old Noah followed me into the kitchen while his sisters were watching television.<\/p>\n
He looked nervous.<\/p>\n
\u201cAunt Claire, Mommy has your envelopes.\u201d<\/p>\n
I laughed because I had no idea what he meant.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat envelopes?\u201d<\/p>\n
He pointed toward the hallway.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ones with your name. She hides them in her closet.\u201d<\/p>\n
My stomach tightened.<\/p>\n
Months earlier, several pieces of important mail had mysteriously disappeared after being delivered to my sister\u2019s address while I was between apartments.<\/p>\n
When Jenna came home, I asked her directly.<\/p>\n
She froze.<\/p>\n
Then she admitted she had been opening some of my mail.<\/p>\n
Inside one envelope had been a reimbursement check from my old landlord for $1,850.<\/p>\n
She had deposited it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was going to pay you back,\u201d she said quickly. \u201cI was behind on rent. I panicked.\u201d<\/p>\n
I couldn\u2019t believe it.<\/p>\n
I had spent hundreds of hours helping her because I thought she was struggling\u2014and meanwhile she had taken money that belonged to me without saying a word.<\/p>\n
I told her I loved the kids, but the free babysitting was over until she repaid every dollar.<\/p>\n
She cried.<\/p>\n
I cried too.<\/p>\n
But for the first time in months, I stopped confusing helping someone with letting them take advantage of me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For almost a year, I had been helping my younger sister, Jenna, with her kids. She worked long shifts at a dental office, and money was always tight, so I never charged her. Most weeks, I picked up the children after school, made dinner, helped with homework, and sometimes stayed until nearly midnight. I thought …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9591,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9590"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9590\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9592,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9590\/revisions\/9592"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}